Do not capture the build-time value of $PATH in the 'emacs' executable since this can noticeably increase the size of the closure of Emacs with things like GCC being referenced. Index: emacs-next/lisp/loadup.el =================================================================== --- emacs-next.orig/lisp/loadup.el +++ emacs-next/lisp/loadup.el @@ -599,7 +599,8 @@ lost after dumping"))) ((equal dump-mode "dump") "emacs") ((equal dump-mode "bootstrap") "emacs") ((equal dump-mode "pbootstrap") "bootstrap-emacs.pdmp") - (t (error "Unrecognized dump mode %s" dump-mode))))) + (t (error "Unrecognized dump mode %s" dump-mode)))) + (exec-path nil)) (when (and (featurep 'native-compile) (equal dump-mode "pdump")) ;; Don't enable this before bootstrap is completed, as the