LaTexing vs LaTexTools (Sublime text plugins)
The point of LaTeXing not being FLOSS is truly important and betting for small-scale closed-source is always risky. If the software author pulls the plug, forking by others is often not an option.
... And as it happens, look what is now WAS figuring prominently on the LaTeXing home page:
2014-06-27 16:48 by Chris
The purchase of a license for LaTeXing is temporary not possible. Due to personal issues the distribution is stopped and will be not continued for a few month.This is not the end of LaTeXing, the program will still receive updates and bug fixes during that time.
As of March 2020, the LaTeXing github repository has been inactive since 2015 (except for one typo in a 2018 pull request). One fork has some extra snippets added, otherwise all forks are inactive.
I have used both plug-ins and I am currently using LaTeXing. I will continue to do so because I find that LaTeXing has some really nifty features such as as cmd+l,cmd+l when including graphics or .tex files.
Both plug-ins do support ST3, both plug-ins support root directives (with some difference in the syntax, the picture above illustrates the LaTeXing root file syntax) and both plug-ins support projects. LaTeXing supports partial build of a project, which I'm not sure if LaTeXtools does.
However, doing a complete comparison is a tedious piece of work – the plug-ins are quite extensive. I'd recommend taking a look at the documentation of LaTeXing and LaTeXtools and finding your own preferences, as these tend to vary from one TeX personality to another.
Personally I'm still uncovering new features with LaTeXing, and I believe (just speculations based on a overview comparison of the LaTeXing User Guide and the LaTeXtools documentation) that LaTeXing is a more extensive plug-in which will have a higher probability of satisfying a proper Sublimer's needs.
Regarding how LaTeXing's closed/open-source status figures into the comparison: In late 2017, LaTeXing was made free (as in beer), with a promise that it will soon be open source:
[LINK REMOVED AS OLD SITE IS ABANDONED / HIJACKED] The code is open source on GitHub and should be available via package.io (see below). For old documentation see wayback https://web.archive.org/web/20180329210203/http://docs.latexing.com:80/
(In late Sep 2017, this page says: "In the next couple of weeks the source code will become available and the community can continue to improve the package together.")
The Package Control web site lets you track the popularity of various Sublime packages. The following search URL will show you the total downloads for both LaTeXTools and LaTeXing (clicking on the name of each package will show the download history):
https://packagecontrol.io/search/latex
Right now, LaTeXTools has nearly 3x the total downloads of LaTeXing, and LaTeXTools has been about twice as popular in recent months. Perhaps the planned move of LaTeXing to open-source is motivated by this.
The posts here from 2014, and the few blog entries I've been able to find comparing these packages, note that LaTeXTools lacked command completion and project management. However, the current LaTeXTools documentation indicates both capabilities have been added.
So far I have done only a simple comparison, with a single .tex file (i.e., not a project), on macOS Sierra. Both packages have a "Check system" command, and all necessary tools were located by both packages. LaTeXing had no trouble building the file and automatically launching the Skim PDF previewer. But I could not do an inverse search from the PDF back to the .tex source. I spent some time looking online for a fix, but didn't find anything helpful. LaTeXing has a GitHub page, just hosting an issue tracker, but this issue wasn't addressed there; in fact, there is very little developer activity there. In contrast, LaTeXTools worked fine out-of-the-box, with the source/PDF link working in both directions. Also, I'm finding the LaTeXTools documentation to be better, and there is much more activity on GitHub. For now, I'm sticking with LaTeXTools.