Installation issues

[steveoh]

I'm trying to run this on MacOS and having trouble. I've been trying for a few weeks now and can't get a successful installation. I'd appreciate some advice as it seems the package is not in great shape at least for my architecture.

  System:
    OS: macOS 26.1
    CPU: (12) arm64 Apple M3 Pro
    Memory: 868.22 MB / 36.00 GB
    Shell: 5.9 - /bin/zsh
  Utilities:
    Make: 3.81 - /usr/bin/make
    GCC: 17.0.0 - /usr/bin/gcc
    Git: 2.52.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/git
    Clang: 17.0.0 - /usr/bin/clang
    FFmpeg: 8.0.1 - /opt/homebrew/bin/ffmpeg
    Curl: 8.7.1 - /usr/bin/curl
    OpenSSL: 3.6.0 - /opt/homebrew/bin/openssl

I've tried with UV as a tool.

uv tool install scancode-toolkit
Resolved 72 packages in 638ms
error: Failed to prepare distributions
  Caused by: Failed to fetch wheel: intbitset==2.4.1
  Caused by: Build backend failed to build wheel through `build_wheel()` with exit status: 1
--- stdout:
running bdist_wheel
running build
running build_py
copying intbitset/intbitset_helper.py -> build/lib.macosx-11.0-arm64-cpython-311
copying intbitset/intbitset_version.py -> build/lib.macosx-11.0-arm64-cpython-311
running egg_info
writing intbitset/intbitset.egg-info/PKG-INFO
writing dependency_links to intbitset/intbitset.egg-info/dependency_links.txt
writing requirements to intbitset/intbitset.egg-info/requires.txt
writing top-level names to intbitset/intbitset.egg-info/top_level.txt
reading manifest file 'intbitset/intbitset.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
reading manifest template 'MANIFEST.in'
adding license file 'LICENSE'
adding license file 'README.rst'
adding license file 'CHANGES.rst'
adding license file 'RELEASE-NOTES.rst'
writing manifest file 'intbitset/intbitset.egg-info/SOURCES.txt'
running build_ext
building 'intbitset' extension
clang -DNDEBUG -g -fwrapv -O3 -Wall -arch arm64 -mmacosx-version-min=11.0 -Wno-nullability-completeness -Wno-expansion-to-defined -Wno-undef-prefix -fPIC -Werror=unguarded-availability-new -I/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpLsRrYC/include -I/Users/steve/.local/share/uv/python/cpython-3.11.10-macos-aarch64-none/include/python3.11 -c intbitset/intbitset.c -o build/temp.macosx-11.0-arm64-cpython-311/intbitset/intbitset.o -O3 -march=core2 -mtune=native
--- stderr:
/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpLsRrYC/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py:289: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'test_suite'
  warnings.warn(msg)
/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpLsRrYC/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/_distutils/dist.py:289: UserWarning: Unknown distribution option: 'tests_require'
  warnings.warn(msg)
/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpLsRrYC/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py:759: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: License classifiers are deprecated.
!!

        ********************************************************************************
        Please consider removing the following classifiers in favor of a SPDX license expression:

        License :: OSI Approved :: GNU Lesser General Public License v3 or later (LGPLv3+)

        See https://packaging.python.org/en/latest/guides/writing-pyproject-toml/#license for details.
        ********************************************************************************

!!
  self._finalize_license_expression()
/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpLsRrYC/lib/python3.11/site-packages/setuptools/dist.py:483: SetuptoolsDeprecationWarning: Cannot find any files for the given pattern.
!!

        ********************************************************************************
        Pattern 'AUTHOR.rst' did not match any files.

        By 2026-Mar-20, you need to update your project and remove deprecated calls
        or your builds will no longer be supported.
        ********************************************************************************

!!
  for path in sorted(cls._find_pattern(pattern, enforce_match))
warning: no files found matching '*.css' under directory 'docs/_themes'
warning: no files found matching '*.css_t' under directory 'docs/_themes'
warning: no files found matching '*.conf' under directory 'docs/_themes'
warning: no files found matching '*.html' under directory 'docs/_themes'
warning: no files found matching 'COPYING' under directory 'docs/_themes'
warning: no files found matching 'README' under directory 'docs/_themes'
warning: no files found matching '*.html' under directory 'docs/_templates'
clang: error: unsupported argument 'core2' to option '-march='
error: command '/usr/bin/clang' failed with exit code 1

as a pip package

❯ uv venv --python 3.13
Using Python 3.13.11 interpreter at: /opt/homebrew/opt/python@3.13/bin/python3.13
Creating virtual environment at: .venv
Activate with: source .venv/bin/activate
❯ source .venv/bin/activate
❯ cd scancode-toolkit-v32.4.1
❯ ./scancode --help
/Users/steve/dev/cruft/scancode/scancode-toolkit-v32.4.1/scancode: line 139: /Users/steve/dev/cruft/scancode/scancode-toolkit-v32.4.1/venv/bin/scancode: No such file or directory
❯ ls
apache-2.0.LICENSE                          PYTHON_EXECUTABLE
AUTHORS.rst                                 README.rst
cc-by-4.0.LICENSE                           ROADMAP-ABOUTCODE.rst
CHANGELOG.rst                               ROADMAP.rst
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.rst                         samples/
configure*                                  scancode*
CONTRIBUTING.rst                            scancode_toolkit-32.4.1-cp313-none-any.whl
etc/                                        SCANCODE_VERSION
extractcode*                                scancode-toolkit.ABOUT
INSTALL.rst                                 thirdparty/
NOTICE                                      venv/
❯ uv pip install --upgrade pip setuptools wheel
Resolved 3 packages in 182ms
Prepared 3 packages in 140ms
Installed 3 packages in 11ms
 + pip==25.3
 + setuptools==80.9.0
 + wheel==0.45.1
❯ uv pip install scancode-toolkit
Resolved 72 packages in 2.35s
error: Failed to prepare distributions
  Caused by: Failed to fetch wheel: pyicu==2.16
  Caused by: Build backend failed to determine extra requires with `build_wheel()` with exit status: 1
--- stdout:
(running 'icu-config --version')
(running 'pkg-config --modversion icu-i18n')
--- stderr:
Package icu-i18n was not found in the pkg-config search path.
Perhaps you should add the directory containing `icu-i18n.pc'
to the PKG_CONFIG_PATH environment variable
Package 'icu-i18n' not found
Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 89, in <module>
  File "<frozen os>", line 717, in __getitem__
KeyError: 'ICU_VERSION'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 92, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 19, in check_output
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/subprocess.py", line 472, in check_output
    return run(*popenargs, stdout=PIPE, timeout=timeout, check=True,
           ~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
               **kwargs).stdout
               ^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/subprocess.py", line 554, in run
    with Popen(*popenargs, **kwargs) as process:
         ~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/subprocess.py", line 1039, in __init__
    self._execute_child(args, executable, preexec_fn, close_fds,
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                        pass_fds, cwd, env,
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
    ...<5 lines>...
                        gid, gids, uid, umask,
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
                        start_new_session, process_group)
                        ^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/subprocess.py", line 1991, in _execute_child
    raise child_exception_type(errno_num, err_msg, err_filename)
FileNotFoundError: [Errno 2] No such file or directory: 'icu-config'

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 96, in <module>
  File "<string>", line 19, in check_output
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/subprocess.py", line 472, in check_output
    return run(*popenargs, stdout=PIPE, timeout=timeout, check=True,
           ~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
               **kwargs).stdout
               ^^^^^^^^^
  File "/opt/homebrew/Cellar/python@3.13/3.13.11/Frameworks/Python.framework/Versions/3.13/lib/python3.13/subprocess.py", line 577, in run
    raise CalledProcessError(retcode, process.args,
                             output=stdout, stderr=stderr)
subprocess.CalledProcessError: Command '('pkg-config', '--modversion', 'icu-i18n')' returned non-zero exit status 1.

During handling of the above exception, another exception occurred:

Traceback (most recent call last):
  File "<string>", line 14, in <module>
    requires = get_requires_for_build({})
  File "/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpWZ9h2Z/lib/python3.13/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 331, in get_requires_for_build_wheel
    return self._get_build_requires(config_settings, requirements=[])
           ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpWZ9h2Z/lib/python3.13/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 301, in _get_build_requires
    self.run_setup()
    ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~^^
  File "/Users/steve/.cache/uv/builds-v0/.tmpWZ9h2Z/lib/python3.13/site-packages/setuptools/build_meta.py", line 317, in run_setup
    exec(code, locals())
    ~~~~^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^
  File "<string>", line 99, in <module>
RuntimeError:
Please install pkg-config on your system or set the ICU_VERSION environment
variable to the version of ICU you have installed.

---

[archana-srinivas]

This looks like a macOS Apple Silicon–specific install issue.

A few things you can try:

1. The intbitset failure is likely due to -march=core2, which is an x86_64-only flag and not supported on arm64. This dependency may not currently build cleanly on Apple Silicon.

2. For the pyicu error, ICU dependencies are probably missing. On macOS/Homebrew, try:
   brew install pkg-config icu4c
   export PKG_CONFIG_PATH="$(brew --prefix icu4c)/lib/pkgconfig"

3. You may also want to try Python 3.11 instead of 3.13, as some dependencies don’t yet provide wheels or stable build support for 3.13 on macOS arm64.

Hopefully one of these helps unblock the installation.

[steveoh]

I've tried the second two options and they did not unblock. I'm not sure what I can do to avoid 1