General newbie question about configuration control of items external to (but required by) projects

[Schlitz]

I was wondering if anyone with experience in CM using CVS could share
opinions/tips/"best practices" on storing the following in version control:
-App Servers
-Compilers
-JDK and other language distributions...
-other 3rd party apps/etc...

For these, is it a good idea to just have some versioned text file in each
proj detailing versions of each of the above used, store the binaries and/or
source in CVS and tag consistently with projects to ensure that exact
versions of these items match up to source, or is some other method
preferable?

I want to come as close as I can to guaranteeing complete reproducability of
builds over time, but I'd like to do it efficiently...all recommendations
welcome

Thanks