Merge commit from fork

* Handle conda-index import error and disable dependency in pyproject.toml.

* Update conda_build/index.py

Author: jezdez

conda_build/index.py

@@ -11,7 +11,6 @@
 from conda.base.context import context
 from conda.exceptions import CondaHTTPError
 from conda.utils import url_path
-from conda_index.index import update_index as _update_index
 
 from . import utils
 from .utils import (
@@ -21,6 +20,14 @@
 if TYPE_CHECKING:
     from conda.models.channels import Channel
 
+try:
+    from conda_index.index import update_index as _update_index
+except ImportError:
+    raise ImportError(
+        "conda-build requires conda-index to be installed. Please install conda-index using conda."
+    )
+
+
 try:
     from conda.core.index import Index
 except ImportError:

pyproject.toml

@@ -25,7 +25,8 @@ dependencies = [
   "beautifulsoup4",
   "chardet",
   "conda >=23.7.0",
-  "conda-index >=0.4.0",
+  # Disabled due to conda-index not being available on PyPI
+  # "conda-index >=0.4.0",
   "conda-package-handling >=2.2.0",
   "filelock",
   "frozendict >=2.4.2",