R package "xgboost" installation fails

Question

I try to install the xgboost package. But I stumble upon this error

* installing *source* package 'xgboost' ...
** libs
Warning: running command 'make -f "Makevars.win" -f "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-32~1.0/etc/i386/Makeconf" -f "C:/PROGRA~1/R/R-32~1.0/share/make/winshlib.mk" SHLIB_LDFLAGS='$(SHLIB_CXXLDFLAGS)' SHLIB_LD='$(SHLIB_CXXLD)' SHLIB="xgboost.dll" ' had status 127
ERROR: compilation failed for package 'xgboost'
* removing 'C:/Users/mancph01/Documents/R/win-library/3.2/xgboost'
Error: Command failed (1)

I try to install this package from github with this command

devtools::install_github('dmlc/xgboost',subdir='R-package')

Answer 1

"xgboost" is also available on CRAN . So you just need to run install.packages("xgboost") takes care of everything :)

Answer 2

• First, your R version (2.12.1) is totally ancient (Feb 2011)!! . Upgrade your R installation to 3.3.x (or at least 3.2.x)
• Then, try install.packages("xgboost") from CRAN, as @Fitzerbirth showed
• Or if you want to install the latest and greatest source code from https://github.com/dmlc/xgboost , follow their instructions at http://xgboost.readthedocs.io/en/latest/build.html
• If you hit the redirect issue ( "package installs fail: Error: Line starting '), then...
• see the other duplicate questions here on SO and also RStudio support's suggestion on alternative methods to download, eg download.file.method = "libcurl"
• as a fallback I found it faster to just manually download the package archive from https://cran.r-project.org/src/contrib/Archive/xgboost/ then do a manual install from local zipfile . http://)

Answer 3

I had xgboost installation issues but could install an older archived version ('0.90.0.2') with

packageurl <- "http://cran.r- 
project.org/src/contrib/Archive/xgboost/xgboost_0.90.0.2.tar.gz"

install.packages(packageurl, repos=NULL, type="source")