I've been experimenting with git replace to remove ancient history, and I have found that cloning a repository breaks replace. I read about this process at http://progit.org/2010/03/17/replace.html. I managed to correctly add a replace commit that truncates the history and contains instructions where you can find it, and running git log only goes back to the replacement commit, unless you add --no-replace-objects, which causes it to show the original full history.

The problem is that when I clone the repository, I expect the clone to contain only history up to the replacement record, and not the old history before that. Instead, the clone contains only the full original history, and the replacement ref is not imported at all. A git replace in the new clone shows nothing.

Shouldn't clone copy .git/refs/replace?