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Executor

The executor is the 'glue' that links all Ratify plugin-based components such as the verifiers, referrer stores, and policy providers. The executor handles all components of the verification process once a subject verification request is received either via CLI or server.

Execution Steps

  • Executor's VerifySubject function is invoked with a string reference to a subject to be verified.
  • Subject string is parsed and extracted into a subject reference
  • Find the subject descriptor associated with reference
    • Check each of the referrer stores configured and invoke GetSubjectDescriptor method until descriptor is successfully resolved and returned
  • Iterate through each referrer store configured
    • For each store, get the list of reference descriptors for the subject from that store. (use continuation token if provided to retrieve all references)
    • Iterate through each reference descriptor found
      • Use policy provider's VerifyNeeded method to determine if subject with reference artifact should be verified based on configured policy
      • If verification is required, perform verification:
        • For each of the configured verifiers, check if the verifier can verify the reference artifact type
          • Invoke the verifier plugin's Verify method to perform verification
          • Return the VerifyResult containing VerifierReport, which has metadata such as the subject reference, verifier name, artifact type, and success status for the report.
      • add the verifier reports returned by subject verification to a list of reports
      • if the verification result for that reference artifact was false, invoke the policy provider to determine if executor should continue to verify subsequent reference artifacts.
  • After iterating through all stores, if there are no verifier reports generated, then we assume we failed to retrieve verifiable reference artifacts and error.
  • Invoke the policy provider to determine the final overall success to return.
  • Return a VerifyResult with final determined outcome from policy provider and the list of verifier reports.