git submodule init initialises submodules for which active=false has been defined

Hello,

I am trying to prevent git clone --recurse-submodules from installing some of the submodules of the repo that are not necessary to most users.

Here is what I did: In my main-project

git submodule add --name one url1 git submodule add --name two url2

Then I edited .gitmodules as follows

[submodule "one"]
 active = false
 url = url1
[submodule "two"]
 active = true
 url = url2

commited and pushed.

From a fresh folder when I run git clone --recurse-submodules main-repo-url both "one" and "two" get installed

Likewise if I do git clone main-repo-url git submodule init both "one" and "two" are installed and appear in .git/config as well as .git/modules/

From reading https://git-scm.com/docs/gitsubmodules/2.25.0 my understanding was that both procedures should have installed only "two" and that I should have needed to do git submodule init one in order to force the local installation of the inactive module "one".

Either I misunderstood the manual or there is a bug with git submodule init

I am using git version 2.17.1 on Ubuntu 18.04

If this is not a bug but an error on my side, I would really appreciate some explanation about the active=false flag so I can achieve my purpose.

Faithfully yours,

Timur