diff --git a/MANIFEST b/MANIFEST
index 056d512..91ae7bf 100644
--- a/MANIFEST
+++ b/MANIFEST
@@ -34,6 +34,7 @@ NEWS
 README.md
 t/chkstow.t
 t/cleanup_invalid_links.t
+t/cli.t
 t/cli_options.t
 t/defer.t
 t/dotfiles.t
diff --git a/bin/chkstow.in b/bin/chkstow.in
index 4887640..2156bb5 100755
--- a/bin/chkstow.in
+++ b/bin/chkstow.in
@@ -93,7 +93,7 @@ sub aliens  {
     !-l && !-d && print "Unstowed file: $File::Find::name\n";
 }
 
-# just list the packages in the the target directory
+# just list the packages in the target directory
 # FIXME: what if the stow dir is not called 'stow'?
 sub list {
     if (-l) {
diff --git a/t/cli.t b/t/cli.t
new file mode 100644
index 0000000..0fc0528
--- /dev/null
+++ b/t/cli.t
@@ -0,0 +1,50 @@
+#!/usr/local/bin/perl
+
+#
+# Test processing of CLI options.
+#
+
+use strict;
+use warnings;
+
+use File::Basename;
+use Test::More tests => 1;
+
+use testutil;
+
+#init_test_dirs();
+
+# Since here we're doing black-box testing on the stow executable,
+# this looks like it should be robust:
+#
+#my $STOW = dirname(__FILE__) . '/../bin/stow';
+#
+# but unfortunately it breaks things like "make distcheck", which
+# builds the stow script into a separate path like
+#
+#    stow-2.3.0/_build/sub/bin
+#
+# before cd'ing to something like
+#
+#    stow-2.3.0/_build/sub
+#
+# and then running the tests via:
+#
+#    make  check-TESTS
+#    make[2]: Entering directory '/path/to/stow/src/stow-2.3.0/_build/sub'
+#    dir=../../t; \
+#    /usr/bin/perl -Ibin -Ilib -I../../t -MTest::Harness -e 'runtests(@ARGV)' "${dir#./}"/*.t
+#
+# So the simplest solution is to hardcode an assumption that we run
+# tests either from somewhere like this during distcheck:
+#
+#    stow-2.3.0/_build/sub
+#
+# or from the top of the source tree during development.  This can be done
+# via the following, which also follows the KISS principle:
+my $STOW = 'bin/stow';
+
+`$STOW --help`;
+is($?, 0, "--help should return 0 exit code");
+
+# vim:ft=perl
diff --git a/t/dotfiles.t b/t/dotfiles.t
old mode 100644
new mode 100755