[Open-scap] RFE: oscap tool to provide information about a given file

[Simon Lukasik]

Hiya list,

Here is a feature request for oscap.

Rationale: In the SCAP world, there is a handful of standards and file
formats. oscap tool can process increasing number of them, but user
still needs to know what is what and what option to use. Situation
partially improves with emerge of DataStreams, but still DataStreams are
rather rare.

Feature: oscap tool option 'info' taking a single file and printing any
information useful for its (file's) usage.

The output of

   $ oscap info foo.xml

could then look like either:

--
   foo.xml is XCCDF 1.1 document.
   <Here goes the BENCHMARK/TITLE>
   Document contains following profiles: ftp, desktop, server, common.
   Document can employ following oval files: bar.xml
   Use `oscap xccdf eval` module to evaluate it.
   Use `oscap xccdf validate-xml` module to validate it.
--
   foo.xml is results datastream.
   It contains results of evaluation on machine x.example.com
   on 1970-01-01.
--
   foo.xml is source datastream.
   Use `oscap ds` module to split or to validate it.
   Use `oscap xccdf eval` module to evaluate it.
--
   foo.xml is CPE dictionary.
   Use `--cpe-dict foo.xml` option during XCCDF evaluation
   to apply this CPE dictionary.
--
   foo.xml is OVAL version 5.10.1 document.
   Use `oscap oval eval` module to evaluate it.
   Use `oscap oval validate-xml` module to validate it.
--
   foo.xml is OVAL version 7.40.315 document.
   This version of OpenSCAP does not support it.
--
   foo.xml is not an XML document.
--
   foo.xml is a document of unknown type.
--

Additionally it could take the --validate to validate the given document
with schematron.


As any other feature, it would require to do some coding, mantainance
and testing. I wonder if the effort would be beneficial for a community...?

Thanks,

-- 
Simon Lukasik
Security Technologies