Patch by Panu Matilainen <pmatilai@redhat.com> for popt <= 1.16 which kludges
poptBadOption() to return something semi-meaningful on exec alias fail:

- poptBadOption() is totally unaware of exec alias failures, and will return
  either the first argument or last option, giving wonderfully misleading error
  messages (#697435, #710267).
- Remember execvp() first argument on failure and return that from
  poptBadOption() if present to give the user a reasonable clue what exactly
  went wrong.

This patch was proposed to upstream: http://rpm5.org/community/popt-devel/0264.html

--- popt-1.16/popt.c				2010-01-19 01:39:10.000000000 +0100
+++ popt-1.16/popt.c.execfail			2013-11-24 15:50:06.000000000 +0100
@@ -192,6 +192,7 @@
     con->flags = flags;
     con->execs = NULL;
     con->numExecs = 0;
+    con->execFail = NULL;
     con->finalArgvAlloced = argc * 2;
     con->finalArgv = calloc( (size_t)con->finalArgvAlloced, sizeof(*con->finalArgv) );
     con->execAbsolute = 1;
@@ -236,6 +237,7 @@
     con->nextLeftover = 0;
     con->restLeftover = 0;
     con->doExec = NULL;
+    con->execFail = _free(con->execFail);
 
     if (con->finalArgv != NULL)
     for (i = 0; i < con->finalArgvCount; i++) {
@@ -564,6 +566,7 @@
 /*@-nullstate@*/
     rc = execvp(argv[0], (char *const *)argv);
 /*@=nullstate@*/
+    con->execFail = xstrdup(argv[0]);
 
 exit:
     if (argv) {
@@ -1697,11 +1700,19 @@
 const char * poptBadOption(poptContext con, unsigned int flags)
 {
     struct optionStackEntry * os = NULL;
+    const char *badOpt = NULL;
 
-    if (con != NULL)
-	os = (flags & POPT_BADOPTION_NOALIAS) ? con->optionStack : con->os;
+    if (con != NULL) {
+       /* Stupid hack to return something semi-meaningful from exec failure */
+       if (con->execFail) {
+           badOpt = con->execFail;
+       } else {
+           os = (flags & POPT_BADOPTION_NOALIAS) ? con->optionStack : con->os;
+           badOpt = os->argv[os->next - 1];
+       }
+    }
 
-    return (os != NULL && os->argv != NULL ? os->argv[os->next - 1] : NULL);
+    return badOpt;
 }
 
 const char * poptStrerror(const int error)
--- popt-1.16/poptint.h				2010-01-19 01:39:10.000000000 +0100
+++ popt-1.16/poptint.h.execfail		2013-11-24 15:50:38.000000000 +0100
@@ -132,6 +132,7 @@
 /*@owned@*/ /*@null@*/
     poptItem execs;
     int numExecs;
+    char * execFail;
 /*@only@*/ /*@null@*/
     poptArgv finalArgv;
     int finalArgvCount;