In 1de7cc we checked the version format when checking for update, but there are
many other places that are doing verfmt-insensitive comparisons. For instance,
the predicates in <requires> all fail if the device version format is plain.
his breaks updating some NVMe drives where the `ne` requirements are not
semantic versions.
To avoid trying to catch all the bugs in different places, and in case we have
a future verfmt that should be treated another way, refactor this out in to a
common function and deprecate the old function.