Onion services v2 are retiring.
It's time to migrate to onion services v3.

Here is the planned deprecation timeline:
https://blog.torproject.org/v2-deprecation-timeline

@torproject that's too soon. Debian still officially supports versions that can't do v3.

@resist1984
If you're still running oldstable, you can remedy that in a number of ways:
1) upgrade to stable (the Hard-Freeze for the *next* stable release is in <1 week)
2) install tor from oldstable-backports (3.5.10) or -backports-sloppy (4.4.5)

While I (always) appreciate coordination, @torproject shouldn't restrict their own directions/actions based on what another project does.
It's also not the first time that Debian supports software which is unsupported upstream (f.e. Qt4 in Stable)

@FreePietje @torproject It's a reckless schedule largely because it lacks coordination with the highest quality most disciplined distro of all mainstream distros. Onion v2 & v3 can coexist just fine, but because of some people's unreasonable paranoia everyone is being hastily forced into upgrades and migrations.

@torproject @FreePietje Migrations are not just the flip of a switch. I've seen dist-upgrade totally hose a simple stock installation beyond repair. In my case I have some packages on life support which interact with other pkgs, a hack-job that becomes more labor intensive & fragile with every migration. It's reckless for Tor project to put unjustified urgency on v2 obsolescence when v3 can coexist.

@resist1984
> the highest quality most disciplined distro of all mainstream distros

Ofc I can only agree to that 😄

@torproject will remove support for onion v2 in *their* (ie upstream) git repo in version 4.6.
The Tor version in #Debian #Bullseye will be 4.5.6 which supports both v2 and v3 onions.
I don't recommend it, but that means you can use v2 for some 5+ years to come?

I don't think you can compare a whole OS upgrade with the upgrade of 1 package, unless I'm misunderstanding you.

@FreePietje @torproject I guess I didn't understand the consequences of v2 obsolescence. I thought the network and directory would break onion v2, so that a v2 supporting client couldn't talk to a v2 server. If the network will still allow v2, i'd say that's fair enough.

@resist1984 @torproject
It can be that I'm not fully understanding it (too), because I don't know/understand all the aspects of how the tor network works.

My initial/primary reaction was that *I* think your argument was unfair.
If you're running oldstable, which soon (tm) will be oldoldstable, that's your choice but you also have to accept the consequences. But solutions exist.

Also note that the link in OP points to a post from July 2nd, 2020, so OP is a reminder not an initial announcement.