Decouple @mui/icons-material workspace from @mui/material

[popuguytheparrot]

Description

Currently, @mui/icons-material package has a tight dependency on the @mui/material workspace, requiring it as both a peer dependency and dev dependency. This makes it difficult to update and release icons independently from the main Material UI library.

Current State

The @mui/icons-material package only uses two exports from @mui/material:

1. SvgIcon component (from @mui/material/SvgIcon)
2. createSvgIcon function (from @mui/material/SvgIcon)

These are used in:

• src/icon.d.ts - TypeScript type definitions
• src/utils/createSvgIcon.js - Utility for creating icon components

Proposal

Extract the SvgIcon component and createSvgIcon function into a separate, minimal workspace package that @mui/icons-material can depend on. This would allow:

• Independent versioning and release cycles for icons and core Material UI
• Faster updates to the icons library without waiting for full Material UI releases
• Reduced dependency coupling between packages
• Cleaner build and development workflows

Benefits

• Icons can be updated on a quarterly basis without blocking other Material UI changes
• Simpler dependency tree for users who only need icons
• More flexible release management

Alternative Approaches

1. Move just the SvgIcon component to a separate @mui/svg-icon package
2. Bundle SvgIcon directly within @mui/icons-material (though this may cause duplication)

Search keywords:

[mnajdova]

Duplicate of #34489

[mnajdova]

Some prior work - #35652, the issue is that we still need the whole theme from Material UI, it's not as trivial as moving the component itself.

[github-actions]

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