In the setuptools docs there are some old references to URLs like bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue38, bugs.python.org/setuptools/issue41, etc...

Does anyone know where did these URLs end up? Or were they wrong in the first place?

From the point of view of preservation and retrieving information, it would be nice if we could retain these tickets as reference/read-only.

Multiple times I find myself going through the commit history to understand why something is implemented in a certain way, or if I can remove some parts of the code that look like they are not doing anything... And more often than not I find comments referencing old issues and PRs URLs. If the links are lost, that impacts negatively on the understanding and the maintenance of the code.