CatBoost - Installation

CatBoost is very fast, scalable and an open source gradient-boosting on decision trees library from Yandex. Installing CatBoost can be done in different ways as per your operating system and development environment. In this chapter we are providing different ways to install CatBoost in your system. Here are some common methods:

Using pip (for Python)

This is the most common and simple eay to install CatBoost in your system. You can follow the below command on your terminal and it will download the library and install it in the system with its dependencies.

Open your command line or terminal and run the below command −

pip install catboost

Here is the process after running the above command on terminal or command prompt −

Collecting catboost
  Downloading catboost-1.2.7-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_universal2.whl.metadata (1.2 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: graphviz in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from catboost) (0.20.3)
Requirement already satisfied: matplotlib in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from catboost) (3.9.2)
Collecting numpy=1.16.0 (from catboost)
  Downloading numpy-1.26.4-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl.metadata (61 kB)
      61.1/61.1 kB 1.9 MB/s eta 0:00:00
Requirement already satisfied: pandas>=0.24 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from catboost) (2.2.2)
Requirement already satisfied: scipy in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from catboost) (1.14.1)
Collecting plotly (from catboost)
  Downloading plotly-5.24.1-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (7.3 kB)
Requirement already satisfied: six in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from catboost) (1.16.0)
Requirement already satisfied: python-dateutil>=2.8.2 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from pandas>=0.24->catboost) (2.8.2)
Requirement already satisfied: pytz>=2020.1 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from pandas>=0.24->catboost) (2024.1)
Requirement already satisfied: tzdata>=2022.7 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from pandas>=0.24->catboost) (2023.4)
Requirement already satisfied: contourpy>=1.0.1 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (1.3.0)
Requirement already satisfied: cycler>=0.10 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (0.12.1)
Requirement already satisfied: fonttools>=4.22.0 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (4.53.1)
Requirement already satisfied: kiwisolver>=1.3.1 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (1.4.7)
Requirement already satisfied: packaging>=20.0 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (24.1)
Requirement already satisfied: pillow>=8 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (10.3.0)
Requirement already satisfied: pyparsing>=2.3.1 in /Library/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.12/lib/python3.12/site-packages (from matplotlib->catboost) (3.1.4)
Collecting tenacity>=6.2.0 (from plotly->catboost)
  Downloading tenacity-9.0.0-py3-none-any.whl.metadata (1.2 kB)
Downloading catboost-1.2.7-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_universal2.whl (27.0 MB)
    27.0/27.0 MB 4.7 MB/s eta 0:00:0000:0100:01
Downloading numpy-1.26.4-cp312-cp312-macosx_11_0_arm64.whl (13.7 MB)
    13.7/13.7 MB 3.6 MB/s eta 0:00:0000:0100:01
Downloading plotly-5.24.1-py3-none-any.whl (19.1 MB)
    19.1/19.1 MB 4.7 MB/s eta 0:00:0000:0100:01
Downloading tenacity-9.0.0-py3-none-any.whl (28 kB)
Installing collected packages: tenacity, numpy, plotly, catboost
  Attempting uninstall: numpy
    Found existing installation: numpy 2.1.1
    Uninstalling numpy-2.1.1:
      Successfully uninstalled numpy-2.1.1
Successfully installed catboost-1.2.7 numpy-1.26.4 plotly-5.24.1 tenacity-9.0.0

[notice] A new release of pip is available: 24.0 -> 24.2
[notice] To update, run: pip install --upgrade pip
Note: you may need to restart the kernel to use updated packages.

Using Conda (for Anaconda users)

If you are working with Anaconda or Miniconda then you can install CatBoost using Conda. When you run the below command it will download the necessary package and dependencies and install it in your system.

conda install -c conda-forge catboost

The terminal output would typically look like this −

(base) $ conda install -c conda-forge catboost
Collecting package metadata (current_repodata.json): done
Solving environment: done
## Package Plan ##
  environment location: /path/to/conda/environment
  added / updated specs:
    - catboost

The following packages will be downloaded:

    package                       |            build
    ------------------------------|-----------------
    catboost-1.1                   |   py38h9b699db_0   16.0 MB
    libcxx-11.1.0                  |       habf9029_0    1.3 MB
    libgfortran-5.4.0              |       h6c81a4c_10   2.2 MB
    openmp-4.5                     |       h44a4d74_1    3.1 MB
    ------------------------------------------------------------
                                           Total:   22.6 MB

The following NEW packages will be INSTALLED:

  catboost           conda-forge/osx-64::catboost-1.1-py38h9b699db_0
  libcxx             conda-forge/osx-64::libcxx-11.1.0-habf9029_0
  libgfortran        conda-forge/osx-64::libgfortran-5.4.0-h6c81a4c_10
  openmp             conda-forge/osx-64::openmp-4.5-h44a4d74_1

Proceed ([y]/n)? y

Downloading and Extracting Packages
catboost-1.1         |  16.0 MB | ########## | 100%
libcxx-11.1.0        |   1.3 MB | ########## | 100%
libgfortran-5.4.0    |   2.2 MB | ########## | 100%
openmp-4.5           |   3.1 MB | ########## | 100%
Preparing transaction: done
Verifying transaction: done
Executing transaction: done

Building from Source

If you are an advanced user then you can build CatBoost from the source code if you want the latest version. So install CMake, Git, Python, and other build tools needed for your system. First you need to clone the CatBoost repository −

git clone https://github.com/catboost/catboost.git

Here is the terminal output −

$ git clone https://github.com/catboost/catboost.git
Cloning into 'catboost'...
remote: Enumerating objects: 345600, done.
remote: Counting objects: 100% (2147/2147), done.
remote: Compressing objects: 100% (1098/1098), done.
remote: Total 345600 (delta 1345), reused 1623 (delta 1019), pack-reused 343453
Receiving objects: 100% (345600/345600), 297.60 MiB | 5.50 MiB/s, done.
Resolving deltas: 100% (266248/266248), done.

After running the above command you have to navigate to the cloned directory −

cd catboost

Then build the project like below −

./ya make -r -DUSE_SYSTEM_PYTHON=1 catboost/python-package

The terminal output is as follows −

$ ./ya make -r -DUSE_SYSTEM_PYTHON=1 catboost/python-package
Configuring the build...
[INFO] [18:34:56] Project configuration complete
[INFO] [18:34:57] Building CatBoost package...
[INFO] [18:34:58] Running CMake...
[INFO] [18:35:02] Generating build system...
[INFO] [18:35:03] Build started...
[ 10%] Building CXX object contrib/libs/oblivious_tree/CMakeFiles/oblivious_tree.dir/tree.cpp.o
[ 20%] Building CXX object contrib/libs/model/CMakeFiles/model.dir/model.cpp.o
[ 30%] Linking CXX static library libcatboostmodel.a
[ 40%] Building wheel for Python package
[ 60%] Linking CXX shared library libcatboost.so
[ 80%] Generating Python bindings...
[100%] Completed successfully

And lastly Install the package −

cd catboost/python-package
pip install .

Here is the output for the above command after installing the package −

$ pip install .
Processing /path/to/catboost/python-package
  Preparing metadata (setup.py) ... done
Requirement already satisfied: numpy in /path/to/conda/env/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from catboost==1.1) (1.20.0)
Requirement already satisfied: six in /path/to/conda/env/lib/python3.8/site-packages (from catboost==1.1) (1.15.0)
Building wheels for collected packages: catboost
  Building wheel for catboost (setup.py) ... done
  Created wheel for catboost: filename=catboost-1.1-cp38-cp38-linux_x86_64.whl size=1234567
  Stored in directory: /tmp/pip-ephem-wheel-cache-abcd1234
Successfully built catboost
Installing collected packages: catboost
Successfully installed catboost-1.1

Installing for R

If you want to use R programming language then you can install CatBoost for R using the below command. To run the command you just need to open R console or RStudio and then run the command −

install.packages('catboost', repos = 'https://cloud.r-project.org/', dependencies=TRUE)

So the command will install CatBoost for R programming.

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