@Eeems This package might also need to be removed. Entware now has 7-zip natively. The only difference is the hyphen in the name (Toltec: 7zip vs Entware: 7-zip):

$ opkg info 7zip
Package: 7zip
Version: 23.01-1
Status: install user installed
Section: utils
Architecture: rmall
Maintainer: Eeems <eeems@eeems.email>
Size: 971259
Filename: 7zip_23.01-1_rmall.ipk
Description: A file archiver with a high compression ratio.

$ opkg info 7-zip
Package: 7-zip
Version: 23.01-1
Depends: libc, libssp, librt, libpthread, libpthread, libstdcpp
Status: unknown ok not-installed
Section: utils
Architecture: armv7-3.2
Size: 1085100
Filename: 7-zip_23.01-1_armv7-3.2.ipk
Description: File archiver with a high compression ratio.

Instead of removing it, just make a meta package that contains nothing but depends on 7-zip to force anybody using the old one to update to the entware package.

Getting upstream updated would be good too

Could you point me to an example of a Toltec meta package? I am not sure what the bare minimum parameters are for the build to succeed

https://github.com/toltec-dev/toltec/blob/stable/package/toltec-deletions/package
I believe you just need a noop package method, so package() { ;; } might be enough (formatted so the linter is happy, it'll probably hate this).

The only thing that worked in the end was an empty echo. Should I remove or change other parameters? Maybe pkgdesc="Alias for 7-zip" or pkgdesc="Metapackage for 7-zip" to better represent the package?

The only thing that worked in the end was an empty echo. Should I remove or change other parameters? Maybe pkgdesc="Alias for 7-zip" or pkgdesc="Metapackage for 7-zip" to better represent the package?

true instead of echo would avoid adding an empty line to the build output.

Updating the pkgdesc would be a good idea.