Thinking a bit more about this, I'm wondering if it's to do with the way Procurve switches implement their config management.
With Cisco devices, I can run something like this:
"copy tftp://X.X.X.X/newcfgsegment.cfg running-config", and it will _merge_ that configuration with the existing running config.
But I'm not sure if that's supported with Procurve. I see they offer the ability to copy a remote config to the local startup-config, but I'm not sure if it can copy a partial segment.
Might work with "copy tftp command-file" - that might do the trick. Would need to write an adapter that uses that command. Wouldn't work for systems that use SCP/SFTP though.
Cisco supports running "scp <cfg> user@device:running-config", but I'm not sure if that's supported with Procurve.