If weightSum is not specified, Android will just add the weights of the children together. So, is there really a reason to use weightSum? Is there a situation where I shouldn’t use it?
Is it more efficient than simply letting android add the weight by itself?
The important word in the reference documentation description is “single”: “This can be used for instance to give a single child 50% of the total available space by giving it a layout_weight of 0.5 and setting the weightSum to 1.0.” In this case, the sum of the weights of the children (in this case, only child) is different to the weightSum.
So you only need to use weightSum when you won’t necessarily have the children filling the entire LinearLayout.