git alias fails if non-accessible directory is in PATH

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