ERROR: Could not build wheels for scipy which use PEP 517 and cannot be installed directly

Question

I'm trying to install scipy via pip on my 64 bit ARMV8 board. I have already installed openblas which is required by scipy. So, no issues with that. When i gave pip3 install scipy --trusted-host pypi.org --trusted-host files.pythonhosted.org , I got the error Failed building wheel for scipy . I have pip3 and pip3.5 in my /usr/bin and the rest of the pip is in /usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages.So basically, I also have pip.

I also tried to install scipy with --no-binary option, which was one of the answers on net. But, it gave me the same error. Below's the error that i got.

ERROR:

Collecting scipy
  Downloading scipy-1.4.1.tar.gz (24.6 MB)
     |################################| 24.6 MB 6.6 MB/s 
  Installing build dependencies ... done
  Getting requirements to build wheel ... done
    Preparing wheel metadata ... done
Building wheels for collected packages: scipy
  Building wheel for scipy (PEP 517) ... error
  ERROR: Command errored out with exit status 1:
   command: /usr/bin/python3 /usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pip-20.0.2-py3.5.egg/pip/_vendor/pep517/_in_process.py build_wheel /tmp/tmpkklsvv4v
       cwd: /tmp/pip-install-9v4nmof7/scipy
  Complete output (50 lines):
  /usr/bin/python3: No module named pip
  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py", line 128, in fetch_build_egg
      subprocess.check_call(cmd)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/subprocess.py", line 271, in check_call
      raise CalledProcessError(retcode, cmd)
  subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '['/usr/bin/python3', '-m', 'pip', '--disable-pip-version-check', 'wheel', '--no-deps', '-w', '/tmp/tmpp7fvgp36', '--quiet', 'numpy>=1.13.3']' returned non-zero exit status 1

  During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

  Traceback (most recent call last):
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pip-20.0.2-py3.5.egg/pip/_vendor/pep517/_in_process.py", line 257, in <module>
      main()
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pip-20.0.2-py3.5.egg/pip/_vendor/pep517/_in_process.py", line 240, in main
      json_out['return_val'] = hook(**hook_input['kwargs'])
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pip-20.0.2-py3.5.egg/pip/_vendor/pep517/_in_process.py", line 182, in build_wheel
      metadata_directory)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 213, in build_wheel
      wheel_directory, config_settings)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 198, in _build_with_temp_dir
      self.run_setup()
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 250, in run_setup
      self).run_setup(setup_script=setup_script)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 143, in run_setup
      exec(compile(code, __file__, 'exec'), locals())
    File "setup.py", line 540, in <module>
      setup_package()
    File "setup.py", line 536, in setup_package
      setup(**metadata)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/numpy/distutils/core.py", line 126, in setup
      dist = setup(**new_attr)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/numpy/distutils/core.py", line 169, in setup
      return old_setup(**new_attr)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 143, in setup
      _install_setup_requires(attrs)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/__init__.py", line 138, in _install_setup_requires
      dist.fetch_build_eggs(dist.setup_requires)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 698, in fetch_build_eggs
      replace_conflicting=True,
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 783, in resolve
      replace_conflicting=replace_conflicting
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1066, in best_match
      return self.obtain(req, installer)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/pkg_resources/__init__.py", line 1078, in obtain
      return installer(requirement)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py", line 754, in fetch_build_egg
      return fetch_build_egg(self, req)
    File "/usr/lib64/python3.5/site-packages/setuptools/installer.py", line 130, in fetch_build_egg
      raise DistutilsError(str(e))
  distutils.errors.DistutilsError: Command '['/usr/bin/python3', '-m', 'pip', '--disable-pip-version-check', 'wheel', '--no-deps', '-w', '/tmp/tmpp7fvgp36', '--quiet', 'numpy>=1.13.3']' returned non-zero exit status 1
  ----------------------------------------
  ERROR: Failed building wheel for scipy
Failed to build scipy
ERROR: Could not build wheels for scipy which use PEP 517 and cannot be installed directly

Answer 1

I had the same issue with opencv-python. What worked for me was updating pip as:

pip3 install --upgrade pip

Note: I am using docker on Linux.