Stop injecting wheel as a build dep fallback

docs/html/reference/build-system/pyproject-toml.md

@@ -135,13 +135,13 @@ section, it will be assumed to have the following backend settings:
 
 ```toml
 [build-system]
-requires = ["setuptools>=40.8.0", "wheel"]
+requires = ["setuptools>=40.8.0"]
 build-backend = "setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__"
 ```
 
 If a project has a `build-system` section but no `build-backend`, then:
 
-- It is expected to include `setuptools` and `wheel` as build requirements. An
+- It is expected to include `setuptools` as a build requirement. An
   error is reported if the available version of `setuptools` is not recent
   enough.
 

news/12449.bugfix.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Removed ``wheel`` from the ``[build-system].requires`` list fallback
+that is used when ``pyproject.toml`` is absent.

news/12449.doc.rst

@@ -0,0 +1,2 @@
+Updated the ``pyproject.toml`` document to stop suggesting
+to depend on ``wheel`` as a build dependency directly.

src/pip/_internal/pyproject.py

@@ -123,7 +123,7 @@ def load_pyproject_toml(
         # a version of setuptools that supports that backend.
 
         build_system = {
-            "requires": ["setuptools>=40.8.0", "wheel"],
+            "requires": ["setuptools>=40.8.0"],
             "build-backend": "setuptools.build_meta:__legacy__",
         }