Adding additional kirkwood devices

[Raylynn Knight]

I’m interested in adding support for additional kirkwood devices to openwrt.  Most of the devices (although not all) are NAS devices.  Looking for some advice before starting as I have upwards of a dozen different devices I’d like to add.

1.  Should I add each device individually?  Even if some of the devices are very closely related.  For example some of the devices are almost identical with the exception of the number of drive bays (eg. Seagate BlackArmor NAS 110 and 220).

2.  Like many of the already supported kirkwood devices updating to a more current version of u-boot would make supporting openwrt simpler.   I see that some of the existing devices have patches under package/boot/uboot-kirkwood/patches in the tree.  I can’t seem to locate any documentation indicating the procedures for adding u-boot support in that location.  The Makefile a directory above the patches indicates PKG_VERSION 2020.04.  Does this mean I should create my patches against u-boot version 2020.04?   If adding devices already supported by mainstream u-boot do I just add to that Makefile?   If adding devices currently unsupported by upstream u-boot is it required to submit a patch upstream as well?

3.  Is there an existing supported device that would be a good model for me to follow when adding additional devices?

Thanks

Ray Knight