those are actually totally separate things. the system in system = "aarch64-darwin" (or whatever other arch) is an argument to the nix-darwin.lib.darwinSystem function that takes an architecture and a list of modules and produces a nix-darwin system configuration. its analogous form is the system argument to the nixpkgs.lib.nixosSystem function that takes an architecture and a list of modules and produces a NixOS system configuration.

the system with configurationRevision, stateVersion, and primaryUser (among others) is a namespace of nix-darwin options that you can set which will affect the generated configuration. some of those fields (such as configurationRevision) are the same as the corresponding NixOS fields, while others (such as primaryUser) are unique to nix-darwin

Has anyone seen this sort of error before? It happens every time I try to darwin-rebuild switch now, but only on one of my machines. I've wiped ~/.cache/nix, rebooted the machine, repaired the store, etc., with no effect:

       … while fetching the input 'github:nixos/nixpkgs/a8d610af3f1a5fb71e23e08434d8d61a466fc942?narHash=sha256-v5afmLjn/uyD9EQuPBn7nZuaZVV9r%2BJerayK/4wvdWA%3D'

       error: cannot enqueue a work item while the thread pool is shutting down

anybody else seeing this while updating to latest nixpkgs?

system-applications> building '/nix/store/qb1b66gq4fla4zgwi1k3fari06a84afs-system-applications.drv'
system-applications> building '/nix/store/xrhfxwxhmqxg1j0yblsp8zdrgcbbij58-system-applications.drv'
system-path> building '/nix/store/dm8cdyp905l4v4nyxl95x587fbw8kw9h-system-path.drv'
system-applications> created 5 symlinks in user environment
system-applications> pkgs.buildEnv error: Can't use string ("/Applications") as an ARRAY ref while "strict refs" in use at /nix/store/xk1hzr5rxgwmqm3lxspr2clayv1a4m7n-builder.pl line 18.
error: builder for '/nix/store/xrhfxwxhmqxg1j0yblsp8zdrgcbbij58-system-applications.drv' failed with exit code 255;

anything like

pkgs.buildEnv {
  name = "foo";
  pathsToLink = "/Applications";
}

should become

pkgs.buildEnv {
  name = "foo";
  pathsToLink = [ "/Applications" ];
}

anything like

pkgs.buildEnv {
  name = "foo";
  pathsToLink = "/Applications";
}

should become

pkgs.buildEnv {
  name = "foo";
  pathsToLink = [ "/Applications" ];
}

result/bin/mesa-overlay-control.py
result/bin/mesa-screenshot-control.py
result/lib/libGL.1.dylib
result/lib/libVkLayer_MESA_anti_lag.dylib
result/lib/libgallium-26.0.0-devel.dylib
result/lib/libVkLayer_MESA_screenshot.dylib
result/lib/libVkLayer_MESA_vram_report_limit.dylib
result/lib/libvulkan_kosmickrisp.dylib
result/lib/libVkLayer_MESA_overlay.dylib
result/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d/VkLayer_MESA_screenshot.json
result/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d/VkLayer_MESA_vram_report_limit.json
result/share/vulkan/explicit_layer.d/VkLayer_MESA_overlay.json
result/share/vulkan/implicit_layer.d/VkLayer_MESA_anti_lag.json
result/share/vulkan/icd.d/kosmickrisp_mesa_icd.aarch64.json

$ otool -L result/lib/libvulkan_kosmickrisp.dylib
result/lib/libvulkan_kosmickrisp.dylib:
        /nix/store/9nis19ya24mhzb5j9ykdcrf96p6z5qdb-mesa-25.3.0-unstable-2025-11-20/lib/libvulkan_kosmickrisp.dylib (compatibility version 0.0.0, current version 0.0.0)
        /usr/lib/libSystem.B.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1356.0.0)
        /nix/store/vxg3p6z49h881sk5q6qa86pjlj4r123d-libxcb-1.17.0/lib/libxcb.1.dylib (compatibility version 3.0.0, current version 3.0.0)
        /nix/store/89ck3bns3nfl0r40i4g891nv57jdd7l7-libx11-1.8.12/lib/libX11-xcb.1.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 2.0.0)
        /nix/store/vxg3p6z49h881sk5q6qa86pjlj4r123d-libxcb-1.17.0/lib/libxcb-xfixes.0.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1.0.0)
        /nix/store/vxg3p6z49h881sk5q6qa86pjlj4r123d-libxcb-1.17.0/lib/libxcb-randr.0.dylib (compatibility version 2.0.0, current version 2.0.0)
        /System/Library/Frameworks/Metal.framework/Versions/A/Metal (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 370.63.1)
        /usr/lib/libc++.1.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 1900.180.0)
        /usr/lib/libobjc.A.dylib (compatibility version 1.0.0, current version 228.0.0)