Currently, bridge-openvswitch starts whatever version of openvswitch is installed.

Upgrading to (unreleased on the tree) openvswitch 1.11.0 requires a schema update. Such update cannot be done while ovsdb-server is running, so it must be stopped first.

This is a problem for those whom uses bridge-openvswitch remotely, as they cannot upgrade due they will lost connectivity. Also, I'm guessing ovsdb-server could not start after an upgrade due schema changes.

The idea is add the following logic before "need" lines on netif_depend():

local db="/var/lib/openvswitch/conf.db"

if [ ! -e "${db}" ] ; then
   ovsdb-tool create "${db}" "/usr/share/openvswitch/vswitch.ovsschema" || die "creating database failed"
fi

if [ $(ovsdb-tool needs-conversion) = "yes" ]; then
   ovsdb-tool convert ${db}
fi

It also creates the openvswitch database if the user forgot to run "emerge --config openvswitch" after installing, causing it won't start.