Can a local Git clone be considered a complete backup of the repo it was cloned from?

Question

Suppose I have cloned a Git repository to my local disk using:

git clone username@git.example.com:someproject.git

Now suppose that git.ex

Answer 1

Your local clone won't be a complete backup. It will be a backup of the state of that repository, but it won't have all the refs of the source repository (so it won't know about the state of any remote branches).

For a complete backup, you correctly found git clone --mirror. This will not only have the branches for the original repository. It will also map all refs including remote branches.