diff --git a/CHANGELOG.md b/CHANGELOG.md
index 8ea956574d..8982a5f716 100644
--- a/CHANGELOG.md
+++ b/CHANGELOG.md
@@ -28,7 +28,7 @@ A brief description of the categories of changes:
 * Nothing yet
 
 ### Fixed
-* Nothing yet
+* (whl_filegroup): Provide per default also the `RECORD` file
 
 ### Added
 * Nothing yet
@@ -83,7 +83,6 @@ A brief description of the categories of changes:
 * (toolchain) The {bzl:obj}`gen_python_config_settings` has been fixed to include
   the flag_values from the platform definitions.
 
-
 ### Added
 * (bzlmod): Toolchain overrides can now be done using the new
   {bzl:obj}`python.override`, {bzl:obj}`python.single_version_override` and
diff --git a/python/private/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files.py b/python/private/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files.py
index e81e6a32ff..01d0bc6c9e 100644
--- a/python/private/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files.py
+++ b/python/private/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files.py
@@ -6,7 +6,7 @@
 from collections.abc import Iterable
 from pathlib import Path
 
-WhlRecord = dict[str, tuple[str, int]]
+WhlRecord = Iterable[str]
 
 
 def get_record(whl_path: Path) -> WhlRecord:
@@ -20,18 +20,16 @@ def get_record(whl_path: Path) -> WhlRecord:
     except ValueError:
         raise RuntimeError(f"{whl_path} doesn't contain exactly one .dist-info/RECORD")
     record_lines = zipf.read(record_file).decode().splitlines()
-    return {
-        file: (filehash, int(filelen))
+    return (
+        line.split(",")[0]
         for line in record_lines
-        for file, filehash, filelen in [line.split(",")]
-        if filehash  # Skip RECORD itself, which has no hash or length
-    }
+    )
 
 
 def get_files(whl_record: WhlRecord, regex_pattern: str) -> list[str]:
     """Get files in a wheel that match a regex pattern."""
     p = re.compile(regex_pattern)
-    return [filepath for filepath in whl_record.keys() if re.match(p, filepath)]
+    return [filepath for filepath in whl_record if re.match(p, filepath)]
 
 
 def extract_files(whl_path: Path, files: Iterable[str], outdir: Path) -> None:
diff --git a/tests/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files_test.py b/tests/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files_test.py
index 2ea175b79a..387e56cde3 100644
--- a/tests/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files_test.py
+++ b/tests/whl_filegroup/extract_wheel_files_test.py
@@ -10,34 +10,17 @@
 class WheelRecordTest(unittest.TestCase):
     def test_get_wheel_record(self) -> None:
         record = extract_wheel_files.get_record(_WHEEL)
-        expected = {
-            "examples/wheel/lib/data.txt": (
-                "sha256=9vJKEdfLu8bZRArKLroPZJh1XKkK3qFMXiM79MBL2Sg",
-                12,
-            ),
-            "examples/wheel/lib/module_with_data.py": (
-                "sha256=8s0Khhcqz3yVsBKv2IB5u4l4TMKh7-c_V6p65WVHPms",
-                637,
-            ),
-            "examples/wheel/lib/simple_module.py": (
-                "sha256=z2hwciab_XPNIBNH8B1Q5fYgnJvQTeYf0ZQJpY8yLLY",
-                637,
-            ),
-            "examples/wheel/main.py": (
-                "sha256=sgg5iWN_9inYBjm6_Zw27hYdmo-l24fA-2rfphT-IlY",
-                909,
-            ),
-            "example_minimal_package-0.0.1.dist-info/WHEEL": (
-                "sha256=sobxWSyDDkdg_rinUth-jxhXHqoNqlmNMJY3aTZn2Us",
-                91,
-            ),
-            "example_minimal_package-0.0.1.dist-info/METADATA": (
-                "sha256=cfiQ2hFJhCKCUgbwtAwWG0fhW6NTzw4cr1uKOBcV_IM",
-                76,
-            ),
-        }
+        expected = (
+            "examples/wheel/lib/data.txt",
+            "examples/wheel/lib/module_with_data.py",
+            "examples/wheel/lib/simple_module.py",
+            "examples/wheel/main.py",
+            "example_minimal_package-0.0.1.dist-info/WHEEL",
+            "example_minimal_package-0.0.1.dist-info/METADATA",
+            "example_minimal_package-0.0.1.dist-info/RECORD",
+        )
         self.maxDiff = None
-        self.assertDictEqual(record, expected)
+        self.assertEqual(list(record), list(expected))
 
     def test_get_files(self) -> None:
         pattern = "(examples/wheel/lib/.*\.txt$|.*main)"