Attribute Order

[mantis]

Hello,

I was going to submit a patch for this, but then realised it looks like the templates are also inconsistent

Whilst I know XML doesn't define a fixed order for attributes, I'd noticed that the order gets flipped between the default templates (included with WDAC), and when saving to create a new file. I'd noticed then when trying to amend a template, and trying to diff to see the changes made to the original.

I'd expected that setting the order of the properties in cipolicy.cs to be in the same order as the initial templates would be a quick fix to make this more predictable, and allow easy comparison. However, whilst this works for some tags, for the tag, the templates vary:

Signed Reputable.xml:

Default Windows.xml:

@jgeurten - do you have a view on what would be best here ? (update one of the .xml's and update the cipolicy to order public elements alphabetically?)

I'd noticed the order issue whilst taking an existing policy, and trying to use Advanced hunting to create an updated policy. At the end, when I tried to diff to compare the changes to sanity check the changes, the comparison was a lot harder then it should have been...

[jgeurten]

Hi @mantis, thanks for filing this. Are you talking about the ordering of sub-elements like Name and ID within a Signer element? In other words, this:

[mantis]

yes - had wanted to use winmerge to compare. I'd originally assumed that it was just case of setting order; but then realised that's technically undefined in xml, and not consistent in the base templates.

Presumably the order that WDAC toolkit should generate is the order of the attributes in the files located at C:\Windows\schemas\CodeIntegrity\ExamplePolicies ?