git-p4 useclientspec broken?

Since I've upgraded to 1.7.9 (on OS X Lion, FWIW), git-p4 submit fails 
to apply any patches if I use useclientspec=true when cloning.

My p4 client is as follows:

Client:	malibu
(...)
Root:	/Users/lcharriere/Documents/Perforce/all
(...)
View:
	//sandbox/... //malibu/sandbox/...
	//depot/... //malibu/depot/...

Sequence of steps to reproduce:

$ git p4 clone //sandbox/lcharriere/foo --use-client-spec
$ cd foo && find .
./.git
(...)
./sandbox/lcharriere/foo/.gitignore
./sandbox/lcharriere/foo/foo.py

-- This is new behavior to me, BTW. Previously, I would have seen
./.git
(...)
./.gitignore
./foo.py

$ cat "test" >> sandbox/lcharriere/foo/.gitignore
$ git commit -a -m "test"
git commit -a -m "test"
[master 7398144] test
  1 files changed, 1 insertions(+), 0 deletions(-)
$ git p4 submit
Perforce checkout for depot path //sandbox/lcharriere/foo/ located at 
/Users/lcharriere/Documents/Perforce/all/sandbox/lcharriere/foo/
Synchronizing p4 checkout...
... - file(s) up-to-date.
Applying 739814457a8faa84dc0bddd830f671569576b177 test

sandbox/lcharriere/foo/.gitignore - file(s) not on client.
error: sandbox/lcharriere/foo/.gitignore: No such file or directory
Unfortunately applying the change failed!
What do you want to do?
[s]kip this patch / [a]pply the patch forcibly and with .rej files / 
[w]rite the patch to a file (patch.txt)


I tried to follow what's going on with pdb:
* self.depotPath is //sandbox/lcharriere/foo, so git-p4 chdir's to 
/Users/lcharriere/Documents/Perforce/all/sandbox/lcharriere/foo/
* In P4Submit.applyCommit, line 926 is:
p4_edit(path)
At this point path is 'sandbox/lcharriere/foo/.gitignore'

I'm guessing this is why the p4 executable doesn't find it. The path 
should be .gitignore. Is it possible that the new behavior I mentioned 
above of reproducing the depot hierarchy when useclientspec is true is 
having unintended side effects, or is a bug?