Transient workspace#clone alternative

Hi,

Since workspace#clone works directly on persistent storage it's usage
turned out to be very limiting for us. All calls to the #clone methods
have to be "self contained" in respect that no nodes can be referenced
outside srcAbsPath, otherwise ConstraintViolationException occurs. So
if i want to clone two nodes with circular dependencies I'm out of
luck, unless i clone parent of those nodes, right?

So far the only workaround i could think about is to implement own
alternative if workspace#clone, but there are several drawbacks.
 - I'll lose the original UUID
 - I'll lose history information
 - I'll duplicate the binary data

Am I missing something or is this really the only way to go?

Kind regards,
Matej