A brand new Laravel project, initialized with composer create-project, is taking up almost 4 GB of disk space. I've located the issue, and the vendor directory is surprisingly large, around 3.5GB.

Is this size normal for a specific PHP/Laravel dependency configuration? What common, large dependencies might be causing this bloat in a standard install? Is it possible an older Global Composer cache or a previous project's files were mistakenly included or linked? How can I safely troubleshoot and reduce the size of the vendor directory without breaking the core project dependencies?

Steps to Reproduce:

1. I ran the standard command for a new project:

   composer create-project laravel/laravel my-project

2. The resulting my-project/vendor directory immediately measured approximately 3.5 GB.

3. I am running Laravel 12, PHP 8.2 on Windows 11.

Contents of composer.json:

{
    "$schema": "https://getcomposer.org/schema.json",
    "name": "laravel/laravel",
    "type": "project",
    "description": "The skeleton application for the Laravel framework.",
    "keywords": ["laravel", "framework"],
    "license": "MIT",
    "require": {
        "php": "^8.2",
        "laravel/framework": "^12.0",
        "laravel/tinker": "^2.10.1"
    },
    "require-dev": {
        "fakerphp/faker": "^1.23",
        "laravel/pail": "^1.2.2",
        "laravel/pint": "^1.24",
        "laravel/sail": "^1.41",
        "mockery/mockery": "^1.6",
        "nunomaduro/collision": "^8.6",
        "phpunit/phpunit": "^11.5.3"
    },
    "autoload": {
        "psr-4": {
            "App\\": "app/",
            "Database\\Factories\\": "database/factories/",
            "Database\\Seeders\\": "database/seeders/"
        }
    },
    "autoload-dev": {
        "psr-4": {
            "Tests\\": "tests/"
        }
    },
    "scripts": {
        "setup": [
            "composer install",
            "@php -r \"file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');\"",
            "@php artisan key:generate",
            "@php artisan migrate --force",
            "npm install",
            "npm run build"
        ],
        "dev": [
            "Composer\\Config::disableProcessTimeout",
            "npx concurrently -c \"#93c5fd,#c4b5fd,#fb7185,#fdba74\" \"php artisan serve\" \"php artisan queue:listen --tries=1\" \"php artisan pail --timeout=0\" \"npm run dev\" --names=server,queue,logs,vite --kill-others"
        ],
        "test": [
            "@php artisan config:clear --ansi",
            "@php artisan test"
        ],
        "post-autoload-dump": [
            "Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::postAutoloadDump",
            "@php artisan package:discover --ansi"
        ],
        "post-update-cmd": [
            "@php artisan vendor:publish --tag=laravel-assets --ansi --force"
        ],
        "post-root-package-install": [
            "@php -r \"file_exists('.env') || copy('.env.example', '.env');\""
        ],
        "post-create-project-cmd": [
            "@php artisan key:generate --ansi",
            "@php -r \"file_exists('database/database.sqlite') || touch('database/database.sqlite');\"",
            "@php artisan migrate --graceful --ansi"
        ],
        "pre-package-uninstall": [
            "Illuminate\\Foundation\\ComposerScripts::prePackageUninstall"
        ]
    },
    "extra": {
        "laravel": {
            "dont-discover": []
        }
    },
    "config": {
        "optimize-autoloader": true,
        "preferred-install": "dist",
        "sort-packages": true,
        "allow-plugins": {
            "pestphp/pest-plugin": true,
            "php-http/discovery": true
        }
    },
    "minimum-stability": "stable",
    "prefer-stable": true
}