it's never easy to come up with rules that work for all occasions. Usually, one should start with a clean Kconfig, devicetree.cb, Makefile, and maybe a mainboard.c. The danger in copying all the files without change is that one ends up with a bunch of devices in the new board that are not really supported (this has happened for many boards over the years).
So the cleanest is to start with a totally minimal setup, and add as needed.
ron