fix(release): decouple module artifacts from the crates.io publish

[senamakel]

The v0.2.0 run tagged main and then failed at Publish to crates.io with please provide a non-empty token — this repository has no CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN. Because native-bundles and github-release both needs: publish, they were skipped, so v0.2.0 exists as a tag with no release, no artifacts and no checksum.toml.

That coupling is the actual defect. Nothing about building the module cdylib touches crates.io. The bundles needed a tag and a version from the publish job, not a successful upload — and because those arrived as job outputs, a missing registry secret took the module release down with it.

The change

A new release-target job resolves the tag and version, and the bundles depend on it rather than on publish:

publish ──┐
          ├─→ release-target ──→ native-bundles ──→ github-release
existing_tag ─┘

It runs under always() so a skipped or failed crates.io upload still yields a target. The two are genuinely independent releases that happened to share a job; a red publish is still red and still visible.

Recovery path

A new existing_tag input builds and publishes artifacts for a tag that already exists, skipping the bump and the publish. That is what v0.2.0 needs right now — it is tagged, main is at that version, and only the artifacts are missing. Without it the only options are deleting a pushed tag or burning a version number.

The input is validated: the tag must actually exist, and the version is derived from it rather than trusted separately.

Still outstanding, and not fixed here

CARGO_REGISTRY_TOKEN is genuinely absent and only a maintainer can add it. This change does not paper over that — it stops one missing secret from blocking an unrelated deliverable. The crate will not reach crates.io until the token exists.

[coderabbitai]

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Reviewing files that changed from the base of the PR and between 21674b7 and 1a97e9b.

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• .github/workflows/release.yml

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