Svelte has a runtime dependency too, it's just bundled into the output. Everytime I've used handlebars I've bundled the runtime into my final application file. But I do it myself so it only gets bundled once rather than N times like it would be for svelte.
See the `update` method in the output of the Hello World example:
update () {
text1.data = root.name
}
This is the entire DOM manipulation code for this component.
There is no runtime library. The trick here is that the generated code is aware of exactly what DOM updates are needed. Instead of a large, general-purpose reconciliator like React's, you have specialized code for changing the DOM, generated from your templates.
