Replication servlet classes, such as ReplicationRemoteJoinRestServlet, ReplicationUserDevicesResyncRestServlet etc. each have _serialize_payload and _handle_request methods. Traditionally we haven't added typing to these methods as it breaks mypy for two reasons:

• Their signatures differ from the base methods in ReplicationEndpoint.
• Their signatures differ from send_request, which is what is returned by make_client and what is run when making a replication request.

If types are added to any instance of _serialize_payload or _handle_request, mypy will complain about this discrepancy, and thus an # type: ignore has typically been put on the method signature in order to avoid this:

A better solution is to write a mypy plugin, much like we already have for cache functions to properly check the types and remove the need to ignore them.

Note that this issue grew out of a discussion here: #8809 (comment)