The goal of interfaces is to eventually run in their own process, so we can't use EXCLUSIVE_LOCKS_REQUIRED in their declaration. However TestBlockValidaty will crash (in its call to ConnectBlock) if the tip changes from under the proposed block. Have the testBlockValidity implementation hold the lock instead, and non-fatally check for this condition.
src/node/
The src/node/ directory contains code that needs to access node state
(state in CChain, CBlockIndex, CCoinsView, CTxMemPool, and similar
classes).
Code in src/node/ is meant to be segregated from code in
src/wallet/ and src/qt/, to ensure wallet and GUI
code changes don't interfere with node operation, to allow wallet and GUI code
to run in separate processes, and to perhaps eventually allow wallet and GUI
code to be maintained in separate source repositories.
As a rule of thumb, code in one of the src/node/,
src/wallet/, or src/qt/ directories should avoid
calling code in the other directories directly, and only invoke it indirectly
through the more limited src/interfaces/ classes.
This directory is at the moment
sparsely populated. Eventually more substantial files like
src/validation.cpp and
src/txmempool.cpp might be moved there.