Different behavior: Finder Copy vs 'cp' command

2 suggestions.

cp -r -p -f ...

The -p preserves permissions, which for applications is very important as you want executable files to remain executable.

My second suggestion is to use ditto instead of cp, as ditto is what Apple uses to unpack .pkg files.

man ditto

I'm not an expert at Terminal level scripting but know a tiny bit. This part doesn't look right to me:

"/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/"

Because the hard drive name by default is "Macintosh HD" so shouldn't it read....

cp -rf /Volumes/DEPLOY/apps/ '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/'

Randall_2023 wrote:

I'm not an expert at Terminal level scripting but know a tiny bit. This part doesn't look right to me:

"/Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications/"

Because the hard drive name by default is "Macintosh HD" so shouldn't it read....

cp -rf /Volumes/DEPLOY/apps/ '/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications/'

FYI, The OP has the format correct because you must escape the spaces in the path by using a backslash before a space. Another option if you want to keep the same human readable format as seen in the Finder, then you can enclose the path in double quotes.

For example, the following two paths are equivalent:

Escaping the space by using the backslash:

ls  /Volumes/Macintosh\ HD/Applications

Enclosing the path in double quotes so the space can be written without any modifications other than the enclosing double quotes:

ls  "/Volumes/Macintosh HD/Applications"

Maybe this is due to being on an external drive. I don't have one at the moment, but I was able to copy a few applications to another location on the internal drive using cp -R and it worked.