NETCONF-128 introduced an explicit merge into configuration during initialization. As such, configuration is introduced by user – if they do not wish the configuration to be there, it will not be there.

This is lifecycle problem as well – if an ODL instance has netconf-topology installed, but then it gets uninstalled, the configuration will still remain and at some point will end up being invalid because the corresponding models are not there. At that point CDS will prune it (IIRC), but this is just magic and a problem waiting to happen.

As such, if there is nothing configured, there should equally be nothing in operational datastore and netconf topology should be just lying dormant waiting for configuration to appear.

As for the detection – the CSIT suite knows what it installs and the ready service reports when all components are initialized – which is enough indicate things.