Unable to install catboost in R

I'm facing trouble downloading catboost in R. Kindly help to resolve this issue,

> install.packages('catboost')
Installing package into ‘C:/Users/Rishabh Ojha/Documents/R/win-library/3.5’
(as ‘lib’ is unspecified)
Warning in install.packages :
  package ‘catboost’ is not available (for R version 3.5.2)

My version is as follows:

> version

platform       x86_64-w64-mingw32          
arch           x86_64                      
os             mingw32                     
system         x86_64, mingw32             
status                                     
major          3                           
minor          5.2                         
year           2018                        
month          12                          
day            20                          
svn rev        75870                       
language       R                           
version.string R version 3.5.2 (2018-12-20)
nickname       Eggshell Igloo

Solution

The error is pretty self-explanatory. catboost is not available from CRAN (but see e.g. here for a discussion).

You can however install catboost if you follow the installation guide available from the catboost GitHub project site. Specifically, the installation instructions for installing catboost on a Windows machine can be found on Install from a local copy on Windows.

From the latter link:

It is strongly recommended to install the released version. Try it if other installation methods result in errors.

Windows installation currently requires Visual C++ 2017 Build Tools.

Training on GPU requires NVIDIA Driver of version 390.xx or higher.

It's probably also worth taking a look at the project's GitHub issues, e.g. Building and installing problem in R. Good luck.