I agree about the ergonomics, but it would be a shame for the API to return a pointer since it forces an allocation and adds indirection. Might be difficult because they're all noCopy, though.

I think it should be possible to return non-pointers in the constructors.
AFAIK the noCopy is not triggered on return values.

I think it should be possible to return non-pointers in the constructors.
AFAIK the noCopy is not triggered on return values.

Indeed, constructor like this works:

// NewInt32 returns a new Int32 with value val.
func NewInt32(val int32) Int32 { return Int32{v: val} }

This also works:

package atomic_test

import (
	"sync/atomic"
	"testing"
)

func newInt32(val int32) (v atomic.Int32) {
	v.Store(val)
	return
}

func TestNew(t *testing.T) {
	s := struct {
		i32 atomic.Int32
	}{
		i32: newInt32(42),
	}

	if got := s.i32.Load(); got != 42 {
		t.Fatalf("wrong value: got %v, want 42", got)
	}
}

while this, as expected, fails with return copies lock value: sync/atomic.Int32 contains sync/atomic.noCopy:

func newInt32(val int32) atomic.Int32 {
	var v atomic.Int32
	v.Store(val)
	return v
}