Configuration of devices without the 'candidate' capability and only with the 'writable-running' capability fails with an 'operation-not-supported' error because a 'commit' RPC is sent to the device which does not support the RPC.
For example, this is the error message returned for a PUT request to Calix E9:
{ "errors": { "error": [ { "error-tag": "operation-not-supported", "error-info": "TransactionCommitFailedException{message=Netconf transaction commit failed, errorList=[RpcError [message=Netconf transaction commit failed, severity=ERROR, errorType=APPLICATION, tag=operation-failed, applicationTag=null, info=null, cause=NetconfDocumentedException{message=RPC during tx failed. Unsupported capability :candidate <bad-element>commit</bad-element>, errorType=PROTOCOL, errorTag=operation-not-supported, errorSeverity=ERROR, errorInfo={}}]]}", "error-message": "RPC during tx failed. Unsupported capability :candidate <bad-element>commit</bad-element>", "error-type": "protocol" } ] } }
This appears to be a regression of NETCONF-755.