[R-package] {lightgbm} is now available on CRAN (fixes #629)

[jameslamb]

I agree with #3586 (comment) ... {lightgbm} has been on CRAN for 11 days now with no significant errors and CRAN maintainers have not asked for a new submission, so we can safely publicize the fact that CRAN installation is now an option 🎉

This PR updates the text in the R documentation to reflect that.

Notes for Reviewers

• I chose to make this a feature so that the changelog entry "{lightgbm} is now available on CRAN" shows up in the Release Notes 😀
• I'm proposing that we remove the docs on pre-compiled binaries. CRAN will create those for Mac and Windows now, and the previous way we created them for Linux ([R-package] Add docs on building and using precompiled binaries for the R package #3285) didn't really work ([R-package] make package installable with CRAN toolchain (fixes #2960) #3188 (comment)). Those binaries weren't created for 3.1.0 and no one has opened an issue asking for them, so I think it's better to not build them if we can't guarantee that they work.
• I'm taking the following steps to make CRAN availability known, so that R users start switching to it.
  • posting on Twitter tomorrow https://twitter.com/_jameslamb/status/1333430608933113859?s=19
  • informed the {rightgbm} maintainers: LightGBM is now on CRAN curso-r/rightgbm#4
  • informed {treesnip} maintainers: Roadmap CRAN curso-r/treesnip#23 (comment)
  • informed {parsnip} maintainers: New Model Request - Add LightGBM tidymodels/parsnip#370 (comment)
  • started answering old Stack Overflow questions under the lightgbm tag about R installation issues
  • commented on this old Kaggle thread that ranked high in search results for "lightgbm R package install": https://www.kaggle.com/c/talkingdata-adtracking-fraud-detection/discussion/53191
• @Laurae2 could you add a note to the README of https://github.com/Laurae2/lgbdl describing that people can use install.packages(), and archive that repo if you agree it's unnecessary now?

[StrikerRUS]

Awesome moment!

Can't believe we are in a step of closing #629! 😃

[mayer79]

Supercool! I will try to bring LightGBM into CRAN packages that support SHAP analyses.

• One of them is SHAPforXGBoost. Here, LightGBM has already made it into the master branch on github: added LightGBM support liuyanguu/SHAPforxgboost#11
• Another is fastshap. I have placed a pull request in Add lightgbm treeSHAP support bgreenwell/fastshap#16

[jameslamb]

thanks @mayer79 ! Let us know if you run into any issues.

[github-actions]

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