Because it has nothing to do with installing files on a final destination. It happens in the middle of a script that creates an image, creates a file system on the image, mounts it, creates device files, creates and copies other files, creates links, finds and installs kernel modules installs busybox, does a handful of other things, and then umounts the file system and compresses the image. By the time the script is finished, no destination to copy to exists.

Sure, I could drive the entire thing with make, and lots of things are already done in pure make. But then I would have to start parsing configuration files as well. Not impossible, but sometimes, it's easier to use Perl.

Abigail