I use NetBeans as my php ide and I have seen @version tags in the docblock that look like this:
@version $Id someinfo and timestamp
Does NetBeans have a way to automatically update this with each commit? Or am I missing the point entirely of this tag?
Well, no, Netbeans does not have a way. But subversion does...
The exact tag is $Id$, and it corresponds to the svn property svn:keywords=Id. Find the config file (On linux, it's usually under ~/.subversion/config. On windows I found it under ~\Application Data\Subversion\Config. Find that file (or create it if it doesn't exist) and then add these lines:
[miscellany]
enable-auto-props = yes
[auto-props]
*.php = svn:keywords=Id
If you want to set the End Of Line type to LF (\n), you can simply replace that last line with this:
*.php = svn:keywords=Id;svn:eol-style=LF