Release dev to production of of 1.x to 1.4 of this module

Problem/Motivation

The current production release of 1.3 is in need of a update. Numerous bugs have been fixed but not released to production.
A number of fixes resolve serious problems in my work so I'm managing via composer with patches - this is getting unwieldy.
A recent issue with this excellent module with the 'extlink_extra' and the 'module_filter' is creating an error/warning.

Referrer http://ubp/admin/config/user-interface/extlink
Message Notice: Uninitialized string offset: 0 in _extlink_get_settings_from_config() (line 101 of C:\wamp64\www\ubp\web\modules\contrib\extlink\extlink.module).

my composer show:
C:\wamp64\www\ubp>composer show drupal/ext*
drupal/extlink 1.3.0 Modify behavior and appearance of external links.
drupal/extlink_extra 1.x-dev 0e88174 Adds extra functionality to the External Links module.

Steps to reproduce

if I disable extlink_extra - the error still appears but I lose my colorbox implementation.
If I upgrade extlink to 1.x-dev - problem goes away. however, the warning on the module dev download screen says 'don't use in production'.

Proposed resolution

Roll up patches and release 1.4!

Remaining tasks

User interface changes

API changes

Data model changes