refactor: drop packaging dependency, inline version parsing

The only user of 'packaging' was version_check.py — two small functions
(normalize_version, is_newer) that just need to parse "1.2.3-alpha.1"
and compare PEP 440-style versions. That's well within stdlib reach.

- Inline a NamedTuple-based Version with kind/pre_num ordering
  (dev < alpha < beta < rc < release), same regex-normalized format
- Define a local InvalidVersion exception
- Remove packaging>=23.0 from pyproject.toml dependencies

Why now: the Windows cross-build uses a hard-coded DEPS array in
build-dist-windows.sh, which was never updated when 'packaging' was
added on March 25. Result: importable from pip-installed dev envs,
missing from the portable installer — tray icon appeared but uvicorn
died with ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'packaging'.

Removing the dep entirely is cleaner than adding one more hard-coded
entry to the Windows DEPS list. Tests (678 passing) and a manual test
matrix covering dev/alpha/beta/rc/release ordering all pass.

server/pyproject.toml

@@ -26,7 +26,6 @@ dependencies = [
     "fastapi>=0.115.0",
     "uvicorn[standard]>=0.32.0",
     "httpx>=0.27.2",
-    "packaging>=23.0",
     "mss>=9.0.2",
     "numpy>=2.1.3",
     "pydantic>=2.9.2",

server/src/wled_controller/core/update/version_check.py

@@ -1,40 +1,99 @@
 """Version comparison utilities.
 
 Normalizes Gitea-style tags (v0.3.0-alpha.1) to PEP 440 (0.3.0a1)
-so that ``packaging.version.Version`` can compare them correctly.
+and compares them using a tuple-based ordering. Deliberately does
+not depend on the external ``packaging`` library — it's just one
+more dependency to ship in the portable installer for a handful
+of simple comparisons we can do with stdlib.
 """
 
 import logging
 import re
-
+from typing import NamedTuple
-from packaging.version import InvalidVersion, Version
 
 logger = logging.getLogger(__name__)
 
 
+class InvalidVersion(ValueError):
+    """Raised when a version string cannot be parsed."""
+
+
+# Release-kind ordering — smaller = earlier.
+# dev < alpha < beta < rc < release
+_KIND_DEV = 0
+_KIND_ALPHA = 1
+_KIND_BETA = 2
+_KIND_RC = 3
+_KIND_RELEASE = 4
+
+
+class Version(NamedTuple):
+    """Comparable version tuple. Larger tuples are newer versions."""
+
+    major: int
+    minor: int
+    patch: int
+    kind: int
+    pre_num: int
+
+
 _PRE_MAP = {
-    "alpha": "a",
+    "alpha": _KIND_ALPHA,
-    "beta": "b",
+    "a": _KIND_ALPHA,
-    "rc": "rc",
+    "beta": _KIND_BETA,
+    "b": _KIND_BETA,
+    "rc": _KIND_RC,
 }
 
-_PRE_PATTERN = re.compile(
+# Matches "1.2.3" optionally followed by a pre-release segment.
-    r"^(\d+\.\d+\.\d+)[-.]?(alpha|beta|rc)[.-]?(\d+)$", re.IGNORECASE
+# Accepts Gitea-style ("1.2.3-alpha.1") and PEP 440 ("1.2.3a1", "1.2.3.dev0").
+_VERSION_PATTERN = re.compile(
+    r"""
+    ^
+    (?P<major>\d+)\.(?P<minor>\d+)\.(?P<patch>\d+)
+    (?:
+        [-.]?                                   # optional separator
+        (?P<pre_label>alpha|beta|rc|a|b|dev)    # pre-release label
+        [.-]?                                   # optional separator
+        (?P<pre_num>\d+)                        # pre-release number
+    )?
+    $
+    """,
+    re.IGNORECASE | re.VERBOSE,
 )
 
 
 def normalize_version(raw: str) -> Version:
-    """Convert a tag like ``v0.3.0-alpha.1`` to a PEP 440 ``Version``.
+    """Parse a version string into a comparable ``Version`` tuple.
 
-    Raises ``InvalidVersion`` if the string cannot be parsed.
+    Accepts Gitea-style tags (``v0.3.0-alpha.1``) and PEP 440
+    (``0.3.0a1``, ``0.0.0.dev0``). Raises ``InvalidVersion`` if
+    the string cannot be parsed.
     """
-    cleaned = raw.lstrip("v").strip()
+    cleaned = raw.lstrip("vV").strip()
-    m = _PRE_PATTERN.match(cleaned)
+    m = _VERSION_PATTERN.match(cleaned)
-    if m:
+    if not m:
-        base, pre_label, pre_num = m.group(1), m.group(2).lower(), m.group(3)
+        raise InvalidVersion(f"Unparseable version: {raw!r}")
-        pep_label = _PRE_MAP.get(pre_label, pre_label)
+
-        cleaned = f"{base}{pep_label}{pre_num}"
+    major = int(m.group("major"))
-    return Version(cleaned)
+    minor = int(m.group("minor"))
+    patch = int(m.group("patch"))
+
+    pre_label = m.group("pre_label")
+    pre_num_str = m.group("pre_num")
+
+    if pre_label is None:
+        kind = _KIND_RELEASE
+        pre_num = 0
+    else:
+        label = pre_label.lower()
+        if label == "dev":
+            kind = _KIND_DEV
+        else:
+            kind = _PRE_MAP[label]
+        pre_num = int(pre_num_str) if pre_num_str is not None else 0
+
+    return Version(major, minor, patch, kind, pre_num)
 
 
 def is_newer(candidate: str, current: str) -> bool: