Summary:
The first parameter of SyncPoint::Process is "const std::string&".  The majority, maybe all, of the actual calls to this function use a "const char *".  The conversion before entering the function requires a construction of a std::string object on the heap.  This std::object is then typically not needed because first use of the string is a rocksdb::Slice which has a less costly conversion of char * to slice.

Example:

We have a load and iterate test.  The test loads 10m keys and iterates most via 10 rocksdb::Iterator objects.  We used TCMALLOC to gather information about allocation and space usage during iterators.

- Before this PR:  test took 32 min 17 sec
- After this PR:  test took 1 min 14 sec

The TCMALLOC top object list before this PR:

<pre>
Total: 5105999 objects
 5003717  98.0%  98.0%  5009471  98.1% rocksdb::DBIter::MergeValuesNewToOld (inline)
   20260   0.4%  98.4%    20260   0.4% std::__cxx11::basic_string::_M_mutate
   15214   0.3%  98.7%    15214   0.3% rocksdb::UncompressBlockContentsForCompressionType (inline)
   13408   0.3%  99.0%    13408   0.3% std::_Rb_tree::_M_emplace_hint_unique [clone .constprop.416] (inline)
   12957   0.3%  99.2%    12957   0.3% std::_Rb_tree::_M_emplace_hint_unique [clone .constprop.405] (inline)
    9327   0.2%  99.4%     9327   0.2% std::_Rb_tree::_M_copy (inline)
    7691   0.2%  99.5%     9919   0.2% JVM_FindSignal
    2859   0.1%  99.6%     2859   0.1% rocksdb::Cleanable::RegisterCleanup
    2844   0.1%  99.7%     2844   0.1% std::map::operator[] (inline)
</pre>

The "MergeValuesNewToOld (inline)" objects are the #define wrappers to SyncPoint::Process.  We discovered this in a 5.18 rocksdb release.  There TCMALLOC was more specific that std::basic_string was being constructed.  I believe that was before SyncPoint::Process was declared inline in subsequent releases.

The TCMALLOC top object list after this PR:

<pre>
Total: 104911 objects
   45090  43.0%  43.0%    45090  43.0% rocksdb::Cleanable::RegisterCleanup
   29995  28.6%  71.6%    29995  28.6% rocksdb::LRUCacheShard::Insert
   15229  14.5%  86.1%    15229  14.5% rocksdb::UncompressBlockContentsForCompressionType (inline)
    4373   4.2%  90.3%     4551   4.3% JVM_FindSignal
    2881   2.7%  93.0%     2881   2.7% rocksdb::::ReadBlockFromFile (inline)
    1162   1.1%  94.1%     1176   1.1% rocksdb::BlockFetcher::ReadBlockContents (inline)
    1036   1.0%  95.1%     1036   1.0% std::__cxx11::basic_string::_M_mutate
     869   0.8%  95.9%      869   0.8% std::vector::_M_realloc_insert (inline)
     806   0.8%  96.7%      806   0.8% SnmpAgent::GetVariables (inline)
</pre>

Pull Request resolved: https://github.com/facebook/rocksdb/pull/9023

Reviewed By: pdillinger

Differential Revision: D31610907

Pulled By: mrambacher

fbshipit-source-id: 574ff51b639dd46ad253a8e664a575f06b7cc85d