Python setup.py install not working mac

I have 2 of my projects that install perfectly fine on ubuntu, both require python3.8, both are installable using python setup.py install and I occasionally uninstall / install them from / to virtual environments as well as globally for testing purposes. Recently, all kinds of troubles and error messages started to occur not following any special event, I just woke up one day, and tried to install one of them, I got an error, then I tried the other and got another error. I will include both setup.py scripts and show the steps I follow on macOS Big Sur 11.0 to reproduce the results, given that both install perfectly fine on Ubuntu with the same list of respective dependencies.

Versions:

python: 3.8.6
pip:    20.3.1
macOS:  11.0.1

Project 1:

requirements.txt

imagesize==1.2.0
numpy==1.18.5
pandas==1.1.4
seaborn==0.11.0
tensorflow==2.3.1
matplotlib==3.3.3
lxml==4.6.2
imgaug==0.4.0
tensorflow-addons==0.11.2
opencv-python-headless==4.4.0.46
imagecorruptions==1.1.2
configparser~=5.0.1
scipy==1.5.4
PyQt5==5.15.2
tabulate==0.8.7
ipykernel==5.3.4

setup.py

from setuptools import setup, find_packages

install_requires = [dep.strip() for dep in open('requirements.txt')]

setup(
    name='project1',
    version='1.0',
    packages=find_packages(),
    url='url',
    license='MIT',
    author='author',
    author_email='email@domain',
    description='description goes here',
    install_requires=install_requires,
    python_requires='>=3.8',
    entry_points={
        'console_scripts': [
            'some_entry_point',
        ],
    },
)

Notes:

• I will truncate logs for character limits.
• The attempts below are done within a virtualenv
• All kinds of problems do not occur if I just use pip install -r requirements
• Installation works perfectly fine on Ubuntu and used to work perfectly fine on macOS even after I upgraded to Big Sur, it just suddenly decided to never work again.
• python is installed using brew install

Attempt 1:

virtualenv proj1
source proj1/bin/activate
python setup.py install

Result:

Searching for PyQt5==5.15.2
Reading https://pypi.org/simple/PyQt5/
Downloading https://files.pythonhosted.org/packages/28/6c/640e3f5c734c296a7193079a86842a789edb7988dca39eab44579088a1d1/PyQt5-5.15.2.tar.gz#sha256=372b08dc9321d1201e4690182697c5e7ffb2e0770e6b4a45519025134b12e4fc
Best match: PyQt5 5.15.2
Processing PyQt5-5.15.2.tar.gz
error: Couldn't find a setup script in /var/folders/hr/61r_7jcx2r3cnklwrr2zwbqw0000gn/T/easy_install-sl9y34mj/PyQt5-5.15.2.tar.gz

Attempt 2: (I install pyqt using pip)

pip install pyqt5==5.15.2 # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:

No module named numpy.

Attempt 3: (add setup_requires=['numpy==1.18.5'] to setup())

python setup.py install

Result:

numpy.distutils.system_info.NotFoundError: No lapack/blas resources found. Note: Accelerate is no longer supported.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

# Traceback goes here

RuntimeError: implement_array_function method already has a docstring

Attempt 4:

I checked this issue and there is nothing helpful yet so I manually install numpy and scipy:

pip install numpy==1.18.5 scipy # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:

ModuleNotFoundError: No module named 'skbuild'

Attempt 5:

pip install scikit-build==0.11.1 # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:

error: Setup script exited with Problem with the CMake installation, aborting build. CMake executable is cmake

Attempt 6:

I checked the issue here and accordingly:

pip install cmake # success
python setup.py install 

Opencv is being built, I'm not sure why or what triggered the build so I aborted and manually installed opencv using pip:

pip install opencv-python-headless==4.4.0.46 # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:

Could not find suitable distribution for Requirement.parse('tensorflow-addons==0.11.2')

Attempt 7:

pip install tensorflow-addons==0.11.2 # success
python setup.py install 

Again lxml is being built, I don't know how or why, so I manually install it and:

pip install lxml==4.6.2 # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:

Running matplotlib-3.3.3/setup.py -q bdist_egg --dist-dir /var/folders/hr/61r_7jcx2r3cnklwrr2zwbqw0000gn/T/easy_install-q32mufo3/matplotlib-3.3.3/egg-dist-tmp-_js7sem9
UPDATING build/lib.macosx-11.0-x86_64-3.8/matplotlib/_version.py
set build/lib.macosx-11.0-x86_64-3.8/matplotlib/_version.py to '3.3.3'
error: Setup script exited with error: Failed to download FreeType. Please download one of ['https://downloads.sourceforge.net/project/freetype/freetype2/2.6.1/freetype-2.6.1.tar.gz', 'https://download.savannah.gnu.org/releases/freetype/freetype-2.6.1.tar.gz'] and extract it into build/freetype-2.6.1 at the top-level of the source repository.

Attempt 8:

pip install matplotlib==3.3.3 # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:

Could not find suitable distribution for Requirement.parse('tensorflow==2.3.1')

Attempt 9:(already more than 75% of the requirements were already installed manually using pip in the previous attempts)

pip install tensorflow==2.3.1 # success
python setup.py install # fail

Result:(pandas fails to install)

RuntimeError: Cannot cythonize without Cython installed.

Attempt 10: (I manually install cython)

pip install cython # success
python setup.py install

Again pandas for some reason is being built, so I manually install it and the list goes on ... I think after this simple demonstration, I don't even need to replicate the steps of the second project however here are its requirements and I pretty much get a variation of the same problems shown above.

requirements.txt for project2

oauth2client==4.1.3
gcloud==0.18.3
pyarrow==2.0.0
requests==2.24.0
pandas==1.1.4
httplib2==0.15.0
TA-Lib==0.4.19
matplotlib==3.3.2

matplotlib fails first, followed by ta-lib (given that I run brew install ta-lib before then) and the list goes on ...

How do I enable setup py?

Is setup py install deprecated?

Does pip install run setup py?

How do I install a package using setup py?