linux id_table与of_match_table

I'm currently trying to understand how linux drivers work. As far as I know, A driver's probe/init function is called when the kernel parses the corresponding .compatible string in the device tree. However, in the arizona-spi driver it looks like there are multiple compatible strings referenced in different members: static const struct spi_device_id arizona_spi_ids[] = { { "wm5102", WM5102 }, { "wm5110", WM5110 }, { }, }; MODULE_DEVICE_TABLE(spi, arizona_spi_ids); static struct spi_driver arizona_spi_driver = { .driver = { .name = "arizona", .owner = THIS_MODULE, .pm = &arizona_pm_ops, // Contains e.g. "wlf,wm5102" .of_match_table = of_match_ptr(arizona_of_match), }, .probe = arizona_spi_probe, .remove = arizona_spi_remove, .id_table = arizona_spi_ids, // Contains "wm5102" and "wm5110" }; This is an excerpt from here. So what is the difference between arizona_spi_driver.id_table and arizona_spi_driver.driver.of_match_table?

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There are several mechanism for driver matching. The id_table is intended to be used for finding a match from stripped device-tree entries (without vendor part), while of_match_table is used to find a match from full device-tree entries (the ones with vendor part). If you check, arizona_of_match is defined as this: const struct of_device_id arizona_of_match[] = { { .compatible = "wlf,wm5102", .data = (void *)WM5102 }, { .compatible = "wlf,wm5110", .data = (void *)WM5110 }, { .compatible = "wlf,wm8280", .data = (void *)WM8280 }, { .compatible = "wlf,wm8997", .data = (void *)WM8997 }, {}, }; wlf is the vendor part for this case, while arizona_spi_ids doesn't contain the vendor part. Hence, if you have something like this in your device tree: compatible = "myvendor,wm5102" Your device will match against id_table but not against of_match_table since the vendor is different. The kernel will do matching against of_match_table first before check id_table (seespi_get_device_id in here). The device matching priority is: of_match_table > acpi_driver > id_table.