Is there a way to get access to a git repository which was public but now is private?

Question

For public git repositories on https://github.com one can use the API with curl and jq to list relevant repositories along with some information:

curl -G https://api.github.com/search/repositories    \
    --data-urlencode 'q=XXX+size:>25'                 \
    -H "Accept: application/vnd.github.v3.raw+json"   \
    | jq '.items[] | {html_url, watchers_count, language, name}'

While this works nicely for public repositories, is there a way to search repositories which once were public but then have been deleted or switched to private - and access them at the status when they were public? Ie, I am wondering if there is nothing like http://web.archive.org/ for git repositories.

Answer 1

AFAIK, there is no such feature in GitHub's Web API − and I don't see why one such API could be directly provided by GitHub to give (metadata) access to deleted or switched to private repositories.

However, I believe you may be interested in the Software Heritage project:

• https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_Heritage
• https://archive.softwareheritage.org/
• A Web API also seems available:
  https://archive.softwareheritage.org/api/