Set __LINK_STATE_NOCARRIER in register_netdevice() ?

Quite some network drivers call netif_carrier_off() in their probe() function.
So I'm wondering whether we can/should add a
set_bit(__LINK_STATE_NOCARRIER, &dev->state)
to register_netdevice() and remove all these netif_carrier_off() calls.

Question is whether there's any scenario where a driver would depend on bit
__LINK_STATE_NOCARRIER being cleared after registering the netdevice
or where we want to preserve the state of this bit.

On Tue, 16 Nov 2021 21:47:21 +0100 Heiner Kallweit wrote:

Quite some network drivers call netif_carrier_off() in their probe() function.
So I'm wondering whether we can/should add a
set_bit(__LINK_STATE_NOCARRIER, &dev->state)
to register_netdevice() and remove all these netif_carrier_off() calls.

Question is whether there's any scenario where a driver would depend on bit
__LINK_STATE_NOCARRIER being cleared after registering the netdevice
or where we want to preserve the state of this bit.

I thought that conversely many sw devices never touch carrier, hence
letting it remain up with operstate unknown. We'd be changing that,
dunno if it matters.