refactor: extract dereference/validate pipeline from reconcile (#968)

* refactor: rename kafka_controller.rs -> controller.rs

* refactor: add dereference and validate steps

* fix: update crate hashes

* feat: add smoke snapshot test

* docs: adapted changelog

* fix(test): make configmap diff better readable

* fix: improve variable namings

* fix: add authorization_config to validated cluster

* fix(test): add vector to cm snapshot.

* fix(validate): improve todo comment.

* Update rust/operator-binary/src/controller/validate.rs

Co-authored-by: Andrew Kenworthy <1712947+adwk67@users.noreply.github.com>

---------

Co-authored-by: Andrew Kenworthy <1712947+adwk67@users.noreply.github.com>

Author: maltesander

CHANGELOG.md

@@ -16,11 +16,13 @@ All notable changes to this project will be documented in this file.
   controllers).
   Previously, arbitrary file names were silently accepted and ignored ([#960]).
 - Bump `stackable-operator` to 0.111.1 and snafu to 0.9 ([#960], [#961]).
+- Internal operator refactoring: introduce dereference() and validate() steps in the reconciler ([#968]).
 - test: Bump vector-aggregator to 0.55.0, replace /graphql call with gRPC call ([#971]).
 
 [#953]: https://github.com/stackabletech/kafka-operator/pull/953
 [#960]: https://github.com/stackabletech/kafka-operator/pull/960
 [#961]: https://github.com/stackabletech/kafka-operator/pull/961
+[#968]: https://github.com/stackabletech/kafka-operator/pull/968
 [#971]: https://github.com/stackabletech/kafka-operator/pull/971
 
 ## [26.3.0] - 2026-03-16