copying offlineimap-managed maildir across machines

[Richard Cobbe]

I use offlineimap v6.2.0 with two email accounts, one GMail and the other
standard IMAP, syncing both with a maildir repository on the local machine.

Actually, I do this on *two* local machines, each with an independent
maildir repository, stored on the respective machines' local disks.
(Should it matter, the machines are MacOS: one 10.6, and one 10.5 shortly
to be upgraded.)

I'm in the process of doing some fairly significant and overdue spring
cleaning on the mail accounts that will involve the deletion of lots of
messages and folders.  Since the process for deleting a folder is a little
laborious (delete the folder from the maildir repository, delete the folder
from the IMAP server, delete the account metadata in ~/.offlineimap, run
offlineimap to resync & recreate the metadata), I'd like to do all of this
on just one of the two client machines, and then copy the Maildir and
.offlineimap directories onto the other client machine, using rsync or
something like that.

Assuming I copy both, will that be safe?  Will offlineimap just pick up
with the new repository on the second client machine?

Or should I just rsync the maildir repository, delete the offlineimap
metadata on the second machine, and rerun offlineimap to regenerate it?

All suggestions welcome.

Thanks,

Richard