bug(material/table): Row hover effect is not working since v17.2 (maybe earlier)

[PowerKiKi]

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Is this a regression?

• [X] Yes, this behavior used to work in the previous version

The previous version in which this bug was not present was

Angular 16

Description

In Angular Material 16, it was possible to have an hover effect on the entire row of tables, as demonstrated in #26203 (as long as we were able to workaround the bug described in #26203).

After a migration to Angular Material 17, the hover effect disappeared. And it is still not back in v18.

The spec defines row hover, and MDC supports it .

Reproduction

You might clone the reproduction repository locally via https://github.com/PowerKiKi/mat-table-v17-does-not-highlight-rows-on-mouseover-anymore. It includes branches for v16.1, v17.2, v17.3 and v18.0.

Or else, see the repo directly on StackBlitz:

• On v16.1, mouseover will works.
• On v17.2, mouseover will not work anymore.
• Even on the latest v18.0, mouseover will not work anymore

Expected Behavior

Row hover effect must be either be enabled by default, like in v16, or if it might break sticky columns as described in #26730, it should be at least enableable via an attribute/config somewhere.

Actual Behavior

Row hover effect is not happening anymore.

Environment

• Angular: 16.1 / 17.2
• CDK/Material: 16.1 / 17.2
• Browser(s): Chrome 125
• Operating System (e.g. Windows, macOS, Ubuntu): Ubuntu