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I wanted to use an IMAP sync but after much experimenting with existing tools concluded that the protocol wasn't flexible enough for a proper two-way synchronisation.

I can't remember the exact reasoning now but several years on I am using dovecot's excellent dsync protocol over SSH to keep my laptop in sync with a private mail server, and have never looked back.

Combined with pine, exim and the excellent mairix (surprised not to see that mentioned yet) I enjoy a decent search on a fast MailDir implementation, with full offline support.