git alias fails if non-accessible directory is in PATH

git alias fails if non-accessible directory is in PATH

[Sebastian Schuberth]

Hi,

I just came across the issue at [1] in my Gentoo installation. By default, it is

drwxr-x--- 2 root games 4096 Mar 12 02:22 /usr/games/bin

Moreover, by default users are not in the "games" group and /usr/games/bin is in PATH. For some reason, this makes git fail to run any alias like this

# git config alias.br branch
$ git br
fatal: cannot exec 'git-br': Permission denied

Is this by design, or a bug? I currently do not see a reason for git stop executing an alias just because it cannot access a directory in PATH. Strangely, I also haven't found any discussion about this on the mailing list yet.

The problem is also described at [2] for Mac OS. Reading those posts, this seems to be a regression when coming from 1.6.3 to 1.7.0.

[1] http://www.fractionsofapenny.com/from-the-trenches/gentoo-troubles-with-git-alias
[2] http://stackoverflow.com/questions/4019501/git-alias-problem

-- 
Sebastian Schuberth

Re: git alias fails if non-accessible directory is in PATH

[Michael Schubert]

> Is this by design, or a bug? I currently do not see a reason for git stop executing an alias just because it cannot access a directory in PATH. Strangely, I also haven't found any discussion about this on the mailing list yet.

If you look at start_command(), `git br` ends up as execvp call
returning EACCESS in the given case whereas only ENOENT was "expected".
This happens before git tries to resolve the alias.

Could it be a legit assumption that PATH holds only accessible paths?
(POSIX?) Otherwise it's a bug.

Re: git alias fails if non-accessible directory is in PATH

[Junio C Hamano]

Sebastian Schuberth <sschuberth@gmail.com> writes:

> # git config alias.br branch
> $ git br
> fatal: cannot exec 'git-br': Permission denied
>
> Is this by design, or a bug?

The "tangent" part of

    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/171755

and then the discussion that begins at

    http://thread.gmane.org/gmane.comp.version-control.git/171755/focus=171767

may explain the current list concensus.