I was little sloppy in that last posting which may have lead to confusion. I meant to say that when a parameter has a single argument, putting quotes around it seemed to cause a problem. In my case I was using the parameters --packages-lists "xfce-desktop" and --packages "firmware-iwlwifi" which didn't work. I tried on 3 separate occasions and all 3 failed, producing a 127 mb image that was apparently a base system without the xfce desktop. When I used the parameters --packages-lists xfce-desktop and --packages firmware-iwlwifi (without quotes) the build worked as expected and built an image >800 mb that when booted, had the xfce desktop. From my memory there was no difference in my attempt to build the image other than the use of quotes with parameters that had a singular argument. Now
it is possible that something else was going on but I am not aware of what other differences there could have been between the attempts to build.