offlineimap smart backup synchronization = bidirectional synchronization without deleting any messages

[Edward Z. Yang]

The key question you want to ask here is, if a new email shows up on
the local maildir, should it get uploaded to Gmail?

If the answer is yes, then the attached patch should be sufficient.
If the answer is no, then essentially what you want is a one way sync.

Edward

Excerpts from Rainer M Krug's message of Thu Dec 20 16:36:46 +0800 2012:
> On 20/12/12 09:03, Edward Z. Yang wrote:
> > OK, so you basically want OfflineIMAP to never delete anything. That would work, in that case.
> > 
> > Edawrd
> 
> This sounds very promising, only that in my case I would combine it with "readonly=TRUE" on the
> gmail account. By doing this, I could delete emails on gmail, and they would stay in my local
> maildir, but not be synced back. Very nice.
> 
> Could I suggest, that this could become an option in offlineimap, so that I can set an "no-delete
> = TRUE" option, where only messages are created in this account, but not deleted?
> 
> Should not be to difficult to implement (I am unfortunately not familiar at all with the inner
> workings of offlineimap), and a very useful option for backup of emails in case of a serer failure
> / accidental deletion of emails on server side.
> 
> 
> Cheers,
> 
> Rainer
> 
> > 
> > Excerpts from proxym's message of Thu Dec 20 13:18:55 +0800 2012:
> >> I need removing it every time, because I want that: 1) all messages which were deleted
> >> locally will be restored from remote instead of removing on remote 2) all messages which were
> >> deleted remotely will be restored from local instead of removing on local
> >> 
> >> I assume that every time before I started offlineimap some messages can be deleted on local
> >> maildir or remote imap.
> >> 
> >> 2012/12/20 Edward Z. Yang <ezyang at mit.edu>:
> >>> Excerpts from proxym's message of Thu Dec 20 12:46:35 +0800 2012:
> >>>> Then the best solution for me is just a total removing of status folder
> >>>> (/home/username/.offlineimap) before every start of offlineimap, isn't it?
> >>>> 
> >>>> I can't believe that it is so simple =)
> >>> 
> >>> Well, after your status folder is initialized for the first time, you shouldn't need to
> >>> remove it again.
> >>> 
> >>> Edward
> > 
> > _______________________________________________ OfflineIMAP-project mailing list 
> > OfflineIMAP-project at lists.alioth.debian.org 
> > http://lists.alioth.debian.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/offlineimap-project
> > 
> > OfflineIMAP homepage: http://software.complete.org/offlineimap
> >