Re: [PATCH v6 12/11] run-command: don't try to execute directories

On Mon, Apr 24, 2017 at 05:17:24PM -0700, Jonathan Nieder wrote:

quoted

This is due to only checking 'access()' when locating an executable in
PATH, which doesn't distinguish between files and directories.  Instead
use 'stat()' and check that the path is to a regular file.  Now
run-command won't try to execute the directory 'git-remote-blah':

	$ git ls-remote blah://blah
	fatal: Unable to find remote helper for 'blah'

Signed-off-by: Brandon Williams <redacted>

For the interested, the context in which this was reported was trying
to execute a directory named 'ssh'.  Thanks for a quick fix.

Technically this bug has existed since

	commit 38f865c27d1f2560afb48efd2b7b105c1278c4b5
	Author: Jeff King [off-list ref]
	Date:   Fri Mar 30 03:52:18 2012 -0400

	   run-command: treat inaccessible directories as ENOENT

Until we switched from using execvp to execve, the symptom was very
subtle: it only affected the error message when a program could not be
found, instead of affecting functionality more substantially.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure I didn't think at all about access() matching
directories when doing that commit. Using stat() does seem like the
right solution.

-Peff