no-hard-link for a simple mv wrapper

I saw today the rdiff-backup command... I wanted to know:  I see in
the man page the
--no-hard-links option: "don't replicate hard links". Is the meaning
that it creates hard
links instead of to "replicate" them as separate inodes? or does it
simply exclude
new hard links from the mirror?

The reason that I ask this - I wanted to create a simple wrapper for mv that
would first cp -la to a new hard link instead of to create a new inode,
then run rdiff-backup, which would register the new hard link (or not?
that's why I ask)
and then rm the original file...

the desired effect: that rdiff-backup would register the new hard link
in the backup
instead of to create a new inode, then when the original
file is deleted, rdiff-backup would then remove the original hard link
in future backups.

Thanks!
Dan