diff --git a/python/setup.py b/python/setup.py
index 935b41241..ebfa657e8 100644
--- a/python/setup.py
+++ b/python/setup.py
@@ -1,57 +1,36 @@
-# This defines the python module installation.
-# Only for double-prec, multi-threaded for now.
+# This defines the Python module installation.
 
 # Barnett 3/1/18. Updates by Yu-Hsuan Shih, June 2018.
 # win32 mingw patch by Vineet Bansal, Feb 2019.
 # attempt ../make.inc reading (failed) and default finufftdir. 2/25/20
 # Barnett trying to get sphinx.ext.autodoc to work w/ this, 10/5/20
 
-# Max OSX users: please edit as per below comments, and docs/install.rst
-
 __version__ = '2.0.1'
 
 from setuptools import setup, Extension
-from setuptools.command.build_ext import build_ext
-import sys
-import setuptools
 import os
-import ctypes
 
 from tempfile import mkstemp
 
-# libin to change to python-dotenv or whatever's simplest:
-import dotenv   # is this part of standard python? (install_requires fails) ?
-
-finufftdir = os.environ.get('FINUFFT_DIR')
-
-# since people might not set it, set to the parent of this script's dir...
-if finufftdir==None or finufftdir=='':
-    finufftdir = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(__file__))
-# removed: this fails because pip copies this file to /tmp/pip-req-build-*** !
-
-# default compiler choice (note g++ = clang in mac-osx):
-os.environ['CC'] = 'gcc'
-os.environ['CXX'] = 'g++'
+finufft_dir = os.environ.get('FINUFFT_DIR')
 
-# attempt override compiler choice using ../make.inc to match your C++ build
-makeinc = finufftdir+"/make.inc"
-dotenv.load_dotenv(makeinc, override=True)   # modifies os.environ
-print('checking CXX var supposedly read from ../make.inc: ',os.environ['CXX'])
+# Note: This will not work if run through pip install since setup.py is copied
+# to a different location.
+if finufft_dir == None or finufft_dir == '':
+    current_path = os.path.abspath(__file__)
+    finufft_dir = os.path.dirname(os.path.dirname(current_path))
 
-# in the end avoided code from https://stackoverflow.com/questions/3503719/emulating-bash-source-in-python
-#if os.path.isfile(makeinc):
-#    command = 'env -i bash -c "source %s"' % (makeinc)
-#    for line in subprocess.getoutput(command).split("\n"):
-#        if line!='':
-#            key, value = line.split("=")
-#            print(key, value)
-#            os.environ[key] = value
+# Set include and library paths relative to FINUFFT root directory.
+inc_dir = os.path.join(finufft_dir, 'include')
+lib_dir = os.path.join(finufft_dir, 'lib')
 
-inc_dir = finufftdir+"/include"
-src_dir = finufftdir+"/src"
-lib_dir = finufftdir+"/lib"
-finufft_dlib = finufftdir+"/lib/finufft"
-finufft_lib = finufftdir+"/lib-static/finufft"
+# We specifically link to the dynamic library here through its absolute path
+# (that is not through -lfinufft) to ensure that the absolute path of the
+# library is encoded in the DT_NEEDED tag. This way, we won't need to have
+# libfinufft.so in the LD_LIBRARY_PATH at runtime. The risk with this is that
+# if the libfinufft.so is deleted or moved, the Python module will break
+# unless LD_LIBRARY_PATH is updated.
+finufft_dlib = os.path.join(lib_dir, 'finufft')
 
 # For certain platforms (e.g. Ubuntu 20.04), we need to create a dummy source
 # that calls one of the functions in the FINUFFT dynamic library. The reason
@@ -80,14 +59,14 @@
 setup(
     name='finufft',
     version=__version__,
-    author='python interfaces by: Jeremy Magland, Daniel Foreman-Mackey, Joakim Anden, Libin Lu, and Alex Barnett',
+    author='Python interfaces by: Jeremy Magland, Daniel Foreman-Mackey, Joakim Anden, Libin Lu, and Alex Barnett',
     author_email='abarnett@flatironinstitute.org',
-    url='http://github.com/ahbarnett/finufft',
-    description='python interface to FINUFFT',
-    long_description='python interface to FINUFFT (Flatiron Institute Nonuniform Fast Fourier Transform) library.',
+    url='https://github.com/flatironinstitute/finufft',
+    description='Python interface to FINUFFT',
+    long_description='Python interface to FINUFFT (Flatiron Institute Nonuniform Fast Fourier Transform) library.',
     license="Apache 2",
     packages=['finufft'],
-    install_requires=['numpy','python-dotenv'],
+    install_requires=['numpy'],
     zip_safe=False,
     py_modules=['finufft/finufftc'],
     ext_modules=[