[Open-scap] RE: custom set of objects -> system characteristic

[David Niemoller]

-----Original Message-----
From: David Niemoller 
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 12:05 PM
To: 'Peter Vrabec'
Subject: RE: custom set of objects -> system characteristic

Peter, actually oval_syschar_model_get_sysinfo is public: it's specified
in src/OVAL/public/oval_agent_api.h.

I suggest that we create a specification file oval_agent_spi.h that is
also public but intended primarily for user extensions of the reference
implementation.  The specifications in oval_agent_spi.h (and the
.._spi.h files it includes) will define creators, setters and
destructors for those structures that are not part of the API
specification (including 2, 3, and 4).

-----Original Message-----
From: Peter Vrabec [mailto:pvrabec at redhat.com] 
Sent: Tuesday, November 10, 2009 11:34 AM
To: open-scap-list at redhat.com
Cc: David Niemoller
Subject: custom set of objects -> system characteristic

Hi all,

I want to return to my discussion with David here. The discussion was
about 
evaluation of user defined sets of objects and creating system
characteristic 
from these results. This might essential functionality that we can't
achieve 
at this moment. 

Why? Because we provide either
* very high level function oval_syschar_model_probe_objects() that
evaluates 
all objects one by one, so we can not choose which ones we are
interested in.
* or very low level function oval_object_probe() that can evaluate
single 
objects. Sure we can call it on our favourite objects, but we can not
create 
system characteristic from these results.

What are the solutions? When I look at
oval_syschar_model_probe_objects() 
implementation, I see four functions that are not public:
1. oval_syschar_model_get_sysinfo
2. oval_syschar_new
3. oval_syschar_set_flag
4 .oval_syschar_model_add_syschar
Possible solution might be to have public wrappers for these. That's my
first 
idea, but I think there might be more options. 

What would you suggest, David? :)

Peter.