We are doing final testing of image 1.4b4 internally. If we found no blocking issues we plan to release it in a few weeks. This is hopefully our last beta for 1.4 release cycle. The plan is to leave beta 4 out for 4-6weeks to let customers test it on their specific scenarios and then, again if no major issues are found, release it (maybe with some very small fixes) as 1.4 stable release.
You should be able to do all the operations you enumerate at once and then reboot. You need to use latest updatelib to support new 1.4 image format (available since b2, we will also release the compression tool as part of the binary BSP in 1.4b4). We also have a new release of the libraries planned in the coming weeks.