For folks considering Angular Material 2, the Sketch Material Plugin/Theme Editor and the Gallery tool is only available for MDC. I am on the same path, and I started with Angular Material 2, and with the recent introduction on Angular Ivy, I am not sure how much effort the team is going to put in the Angular Material 2. I am moving to MDC, which is a safe bet.
From the recent Readme :
High level stuff planned for Q1 → Q2 2019 (January - June):
- Most of the Angular Material team is on loan to the framework team
helping with Ivy. We've been using the Angular CDK and Angular
Material tests to validate code paths as well as helping debug issues
in switching Google applications to the new rendering pipeline.
- We're also working with the Material Design team on a strategy to collaborate more deeply. We'll have more to share on this once our plans are further along.
- Assorted bugfixes and minor feature improvements.
- Design for API enhancements to the tree component to improve
ergonomics.
