Whats up with git submodules refusing to clone/update/checkout submodules while having all their files showing up as deleted? I encounter this quite a lot and t

Whats up with git submodules refusing to clone/update/checkout submodules while having all their files showing up as deleted? I encounter this quite a lot and the solution seems to be a git submodule sync --recursive (or something like that) but I don't get why I run into this in the first place? Probably related to forgetting --recurse-submodules when cloning but what do I know?