Storing Gmail labels

[Oon-Ee Ng]

On Tue, Oct 2, 2012 at 3:48 PM, Rainer M Krug <R.M.Krug at gmail.com> wrote:
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> On 02/10/12 06:44, Zain Memon wrote:
>> I'm using OfflineIMAP to sync with Gmail. To save on space and download time, I'm only syncing
>> the "[Gmail]/All Mail" folder. This stops me from having multiple copies of the same message
>> stored (one in each folder corresponding to each label on the message). However, the downside
>> is that I no longer have label information attached to those messages.
>>
>> When dealing directly with Gmail's IMAP server, I can fetch X-GM-LABELS to get the labels with
>> the message.
>>
>> Can I get OfflineIMAP to fetch and store my Gmail labels without having multiple copies of the
>> same message?
>
> I can't give you a solution, but I can say that the same topic came up on the notmuch newsgroup,
> and no real solution was found.
>
> I think the possibility to sync the gmail tags automatically and only having a single copy of the
> email local (which could be automatically enabled when using type = Gmail), would be a very useful
> (and as far as I know unique) feature, which could make offlineimap THE gmail offline and backup tool.
>
> Rainer

Unfortunately, gmail isn't IMAP, and unless the tool is called
offlinegmail (which I would not mind, being a gmail user myself, but
its a serious reduction in scope) such hackery *might* be
counterproductive. The code would branch at various points and it'd be
harder to test (have the unit tests been written yet?) as well.