Mike, that's actually what I do with one exception. As in your builds the folders of portables were in /cont/opt with, naturally, their start-scripts --such as LAUNCH-- being in those folders. As /opt is not 'on the path' you created a symlink to the start-script in /cont/usr/bin. For consistency and convenience in 'finding, editing, using as templates, etc.' I created the symlinks to the start-script in /cont/root/my-applications/bin which is also 'on the path'.
See my post here, viewtopic.php?p=36685#p36685 regarding what I now believe to be the problems I encountered.