Register fastfields-helpers as a sixth indexed project

[balbasty]

Why

fastfields-helpers is a new, sixth distribution: the pure-Python enums (Spline/Bound) and argument normalisers being split out of fastfields-dlpack, so a one-line Python fix no longer needs a full compiled-wheel release cycle across every platform.

It publishes a single universal py3-none-any wheel exactly like the other pure-Python distributions, so it is registered as a peer of the existing five, not a special case: one entry in projects, one [[sources.release]].

Registering before the release exists is safe — verified, not assumed

The plan called for registering the project ahead of its first release. I checked generate.py rather than assuming it tolerates that, and it does, for two independent reasons:

1. projects is never read.generate.py consumes only index.{title,base_url,backends} and sources.release[].repo. The index tree is built purely from wheels actually discovered, so a listed-but-wheel-less project simply never appears in any folder.
2. A repo whose Releases API call errors is skipped with a warning, not a failure — wheels_from_releases() catches URLError/HTTPError per repo and continues (the docstring already promises "Repos that error (404, rate limit) are skipped with a warning").

Confirmed empirically by running the generator against this exact config, with the repo not yet existing:

$ python generate.py --from-releases --out /tmp/whlout
::warning::skipping fastfields/fastfields-helpers: HTTP Error 403: Forbidden
wrote 0 wheels across 0 published backend(s) (none) to /tmp/whlout;
4 planned backend(s) (cpu, cu118, cu126, cu130) serve no packages
$ echo $?
0

It warns, skips, and still writes a valid index. Once the first release lands, the entry starts resolving with no further change here.

Verification

python -m pytest test_generate.py -q → 17 passed, 16 subtests passed, unchanged.

Sequencing

Part of the fastfields-helpers extraction. The prerequisite workflow change (fastfields/.github#10, needs-dlpack input) is already merged. The repo fastfields/fastfields-helpers itself could not be created from this session — org repo creation returns 403 Resource not accessible by integration — so that step is human-gated; this registration is deliberately landed first since it is safe either way and unblocks the release the moment the repo exists.

🤖 Generated with Claude Code

https://claude.ai/code/session_016AjQcY78NgbagPSbPJRr6Z

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