Rom cloning weirdness

I’ve been trying to clone BCM2835.git on ubuntu with:

git clone --recurse-submodules --remote-submodules --jobs 8 XXXX//gitlab.riscosopen.org/Products/BCM2835.git

where XXXX is https: to stop textile mangling it.

When complete there are hundreds of what git says are directories marked as modified. A diff of the modified directory looks like this:

diff --git a/RiscOS/Env b/RiscOS/Env
index 7c6411b..0d95611 160000
--- a/RiscOS/Env
+++ b/RiscOS/Env
@@ -1 +1 @@
-Subproject commit 7c6411b3a0d37ca5e01e9b6774bcaf3c18254ca8
+Subproject commit 0d95611863f2e77704c20dcefa92bd3a0ef24c8e

If I remove --remote-submodules I don’t get the latest files checked out but I don’t get the modified directories. If I do anything to the modified directories, like deleting/committing them, I get the same effect as not using --remote-submodules.

Can anyone repeat this? Anyone any idea what is going on?