Beginning in dovecot-1.0-rc3, the following is supported: "SIGHUP: Reload settings. Restarts the auth and login processes. If the updated config file is invalid, it will stick with the old in-memory settings." (from http://wiki.dovecot.org/QuestionsAndAnswers#head-045b7deb282e66e87576aac2b83ac085b2390847) Attached is a patch to the ebuild, adding a reload function.
Created attachment 103359 [details, diff] add reload() to /etc/init.d/dovecot
Thanks for th patch, added to CVS.