I have a Rust project that follows a structure:

- main_crate (features = "x")
  - driver_crate (features = "x")
    - x_crate
    ...
  ...

In my main_crate, I have a feature flag x that I enable by default which is propagated to the driver_crate via the following setup in main_crate/Cargo.toml:

[features]
x = ["driver-crate/x"]

# default = ["x"]

The driver_crate/Cargo.toml specifies the x dependency as optional in the following way:

[dependencies]
x-crate = { path = "../x-crate", optional = true }

[features]
x = ["dep:x-crate"]

Suppose that I run cargo build --no-default-features, my expectation is that now that x is no longer enabled by default, Cargo should now treat the x dependency as false and hence not even attempt to compile it as part of the project. Instead, cargo still adds x_crate as part of the compilation process.

Is there a way to ensure that x_crate is not compiled at all when feature x is not specified?