Well we're almost there I think. You can define dependencies and other metadata in pyproject.toml nowadays:
https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/userguide/pyproject_con...
https://setuptools.pypa.io/en/latest/userguide/pyproject_con...
Then orf dreamed of a day where you could "describe what system libraries I may need without having to execute setup.py and find out, and express compile time flags."
The link you pointed doesn't appear to handle what we were talking about. By specifying "gfortran", I hoped to highlight that difference.
riff, building on nix, seems an intriguing solution for this.