There is no HINT in the error message itself, but there is in the documentation, see note at end of https://www.postgresql.org/docs/current/sql-dropsubscription.html. I agree with you that the DROP should just work in this case, even more so than in my case. But if we go with the argument that doing that is too error prone, then do we want to include a HINT on how to be error prone more conveniently?
Cheers,
Jeff
Ah. I missed that bit in the documentation!
Perhaps a publication should remember, whether it actually created a replication slot and only try to remove it, if it did. Although that probably wouldn't help much in your case.
