diff --git a/DESCRIPTION b/DESCRIPTION
index 5148679c85..09609910ea 100644
--- a/DESCRIPTION
+++ b/DESCRIPTION
@@ -1,7 +1,7 @@
 Package: knitr
 Type: Package
 Title: A General-Purpose Package for Dynamic Report Generation in R
-Version: 1.49.6
+Version: 1.49.7
 Authors@R: c(
     person("Yihui", "Xie", role = c("aut", "cre"), email = "xie@yihui.name", comment = c(ORCID = "0000-0003-0645-5666", URL = "https://yihui.org")),
     person("Abhraneel", "Sarma", role = "ctb"),
diff --git a/NAMESPACE b/NAMESPACE
index 464cec8b27..a7d7eb1ff1 100644
--- a/NAMESPACE
+++ b/NAMESPACE
@@ -124,7 +124,6 @@ export(raw_latex)
 export(raw_output)
 export(read_chunk)
 export(read_demo)
-export(read_rforge)
 export(render_asciidoc)
 export(render_html)
 export(render_jekyll)
diff --git a/NEWS.md b/NEWS.md
index 14a5cee6c5..25bf8f5e86 100644
--- a/NEWS.md
+++ b/NEWS.md
@@ -10,6 +10,8 @@
 
 - A warning will be issued when chunk options are duplicated in both the chunk header and pipe comments (thanks, @cderv, #2386). A chunk option should appear in only one of these places.
 
+- Removed the function `read_rforge()` since it has stopped working for a long time.
+
 # CHANGES IN knitr VERSION 1.49
 
 ## NEW FEATURES
diff --git a/R/utils.R b/R/utils.R
index 7add5f0976..530c3a6dcd 100644
--- a/R/utils.R
+++ b/R/utils.R
@@ -688,26 +688,6 @@ escape_latex = function(x, newlines = FALSE, spaces = FALSE) {
 # TODO: remove this after https://github.com/mgondan/mathml/pull/18
 escape_html = xfun::html_escape
 
-#' Read source code from R-Forge
-#'
-#' This function reads source code from the SVN repositories on R-Forge.
-#' @param path Relative path to the source script on R-Forge.
-#' @param project Name of the R-Forge project.
-#' @param extra Extra parameters to be passed to the URL (e.g. \code{extra =
-#'   '&revision=48'} to check out the source of revision 48).
-#' @return A character vector of the source code.
-#' @author Yihui Xie and Peter Ruckdeschel
-#' @export
-#' @examplesIf interactive()
-#' library(knitr)
-#' # relies on r-forge.r-project.org being accessible
-#' read_rforge('rgl/R/axes.R', project = 'rgl')
-#' read_rforge('rgl/R/axes.R', project = 'rgl', extra='&revision=519')
-read_rforge = function(path, project, extra = '') {
-  base = 'http://r-forge.r-project.org/scm/viewvc.php/*checkout*/pkg'
-  read_utf8(sprintf('%s/%s?root=%s%s', base, path, project, extra))
-}
-
 split_lines = function(x) xfun::split_lines(x)
 
 # if a string is encoded in UTF-8, convert it to native encoding
diff --git a/man/read_rforge.Rd b/man/read_rforge.Rd
deleted file mode 100644
index 8fdcb192f0..0000000000
--- a/man/read_rforge.Rd
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,32 +0,0 @@
-% Generated by roxygen2: do not edit by hand
-% Please edit documentation in R/utils.R
-\name{read_rforge}
-\alias{read_rforge}
-\title{Read source code from R-Forge}
-\usage{
-read_rforge(path, project, extra = "")
-}
-\arguments{
-\item{path}{Relative path to the source script on R-Forge.}
-
-\item{project}{Name of the R-Forge project.}
-
-\item{extra}{Extra parameters to be passed to the URL (e.g. \code{extra =
-'&revision=48'} to check out the source of revision 48).}
-}
-\value{
-A character vector of the source code.
-}
-\description{
-This function reads source code from the SVN repositories on R-Forge.
-}
-\examples{\dontshow{if (interactive()) (if (getRversion() >= "3.4") withAutoprint else force)(\{ # examplesIf}
-library(knitr)
-# relies on r-forge.r-project.org being accessible
-read_rforge("rgl/R/axes.R", project = "rgl")
-read_rforge("rgl/R/axes.R", project = "rgl", extra = "&revision=519")
-\dontshow{\}) # examplesIf}
-}
-\author{
-Yihui Xie and Peter Ruckdeschel
-}