Pyhdf installation problem

[j-bottcher]

What version of pyhdf, HDF4, and Python are you using?

pyhdf version: 0.10.2 (also tried 0.9)
HDF4 C library version: 4.2.15
Python version: 3.6.8

What operating system are you using?

Linux

What did you do?

As mentioned in Installation guide:
named the Lib and inc directories,
tried pip install --user --upgrade pyhdf and running python setup.py install --user/--prefix=...

What did you expect to see?

Installation of pyhdf

What did you see instead?

Some Commadn failed with error code 1.
Original error output is longer, with the extra info:
[...]/gcc [...] cannot find -ldf
collect 2 error: ld returned 1 exit status
and:
error: Command [...]/gcc [...] failed with exit status 1