Cannot find EmailTemplate folder in metadata - is it not possible to create EmailTemplate folders through ant?

Question

I'm running an ant deploy, it's failing on this:

All Component Failures:
1.  email/Consumer_AliX/AE002_Service_Request_Confirmation.email -- Error: Cannot find folder:Consumer_AliX
2.  email/Consumer_AliX/AE004_Service_Request_Denied.email -- Error: Cannot find folder:Consumer_AliX
3.  email/Consumer_AliX/AE003_Service_Request_Approved.email -- Error: Cannot find folder:Consumer_AliX
4. ....plus other dependency errors cascading from the first three...

I added the templates with the folder path to package.xml (as I know EmailTemplate doesn't support the wildcard selector).

Here is the relevant package.xml:

<members>Consumer_AliX/AE002_Service_Request_Confirmation</members>
<members>Consumer_AliX/AE003_Service_Request_Approved</members>
<members>Consumer_AliX/AE004_Service_Request_Denied</members>
<name>EmailTemplate</name>

Here's the meta for the folder:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<EmailFolder xmlns="http://soap.sforce.com/2006/04/metadata">
    <accessType>Public</accessType>
    <name>Consumer - AliX</name>
    <publicFolderAccess>ReadOnly</publicFolderAccess>
</EmailFolder>

And here's visual evidence that the folder exists in the same directory as the meta file:

What am I overlooking here - why can't the deployment find the folder? Is this something that must be done manually in the destination org?

Answer 1

You can do this as part of the deployment, you simply need to include the folder by itself as a deployment item.

<types>
    <members>Consumer_AliX</members>
    <members>Consumer_AliX/AE002_Service_Request_Confirmation</members>
    <members>Consumer_AliX/AE003_Service_Request_Approved</members>
    <members>Consumer_AliX/AE004_Service_Request_Denied</members>
    <name>EmailTemplate</name>
</types>