And it is still the wrong way to do this, as was mentioned by Frank previously in this thread.
Apologies, I obviously didn't make myself clear
If a bootable image is the endgoal, as mentioned above:
Everything needs to be built first
Then packages can be built - possibly using the sets you have just built, and, depending on the packages needed, even cross built
Embedded systems providers would build their own software around about now
Then you can create a target file system, possibly by using some of the in-tree tools
Then select binaries/libraries/utilities/configs/scripts/maybe even docs can be installed onto your image
Or you could go wild and build a single crunchgenned binary, with a single db file for /etc (the db file was lukem's idea at wasabi, and worked well)
Or, instead of building src/xsrc into sets, try the syspkg approach
Cutting single programs out of the initial build process is insufficient and wrong