Every once in awhile, a public GitHub repository goes missing.

This isn’t new. The internet is an organic thing, and many webpages — sometimes only couple years old — succumb to oblivion.

Besides the usual Check archive.org and the Wayback Machine, I found that many source code repositories also live in the Software Heritage’s Archive.

For example I wanted to find an example implementation of an instagib railgun mod for Quake II. Various internet posts pointed to https://github.com/5himmy/rail — which is a dead link. RIP.

I copied the dead URL, visited https://archive.softwareheritage.org/ and pasted the URL into the search box. From there, I clicked Download and followed the on-screen prompts.

Et Viola — a full copy of the source code, recovered and ready for learning!

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