By letting the application load all required components into memory before running the test(s). If Component A needs Component B which needs Component C, they all get loaded as they would in production (ie. without mocks). If this means that almost the whole application gets loaded to run a single test, so be it.
The only time this approach is really a problem is when doing slow calls such as I/O - eg. writing to the database. In such cases you can easily switch to an in-memory database or use a factory pattern (which is kind of like a hand-rolled mock).
It's true that an error in say Component C may generate many failures in test of for other components, but in practice that's not really a problem. Just pick one of the test failures and drill down until you find the root cause - fixing that cause will magically fix the other 55 test failures.
The only time this approach is really a problem is when doing slow calls such as I/O - eg. writing to the database. In such cases you can easily switch to an in-memory database or use a factory pattern (which is kind of like a hand-rolled mock).
It's true that an error in say Component C may generate many failures in test of for other components, but in practice that's not really a problem. Just pick one of the test failures and drill down until you find the root cause - fixing that cause will magically fix the other 55 test failures.