Yeah, read and write using Simple 360 NAND Flasher... it has to be done that way because of the MMC, nobody has reversed how the dashboard communicates with the MMC yet, therefor we cannot access that from XeLL... the only other option at this time is to use hardware (which for the record is a pita by itself)
Yes, when you build a new freeboot image (using xeBuild GUI, JRunner or AutoGG) you always get an updated XeLL with it aswell (all of these apps use xebuild in the background...