Can I migrate everything to a different system?

[xcpn]

I have setup signal-cli (as main device, not linked) on Debian 12 for testing and experimentation, all this within the last week.

I finished with what I wanted to test and now I want to change the account phone number and migrate everything on Debian 11 (not Debian12).

Can I simply change the phone number while in the current system, and then copy all related directories and the binary from Debian 12 to Debian 11 without issues?

I did not setup Sockets or anything, simply use it to send and recieve messages. Also edited the profile to not show phone number, changed name and avatar, etc.

I'm using the Linux-native package and since the doc says to install openjdk-17-jre for Debian 11 (which is what I downloaded for Debian 12 too), I can just download it there too.

Also I already use the official Signal Desktop package on Debian 11. I want to use signal-cli in combination, any issues with that?

[xcpn]

TL;DR: You can copy the config from one system to another and use it there, but not the binary.

The configuration directory is very simple. You copy your old directory to the new system in $HOME/.local/share/signal-cli and signal-cli will detect it automatically.

If you want to set a custom path, you can use the --config argument.

For the signal-cli binary, you cannot just copy the same native binary when it comes to lower Debian version. signal-cli is built for Debian 12 and higher, and Debian 11 doesn't cut it.

You either have to build the binary on your own for Debian 11 (GLIBC 2.31), or download from 3rd party projects that build and release the binary for your target Distribution.

Thankfully since I made this discussion post I learned a lot about this project and was able to build the native binary for Debian 11 (GLIBC 2.31) on my own.