Should developers keep the web.config file updated and commit it to a VCS such as SVN? At my company we very rarely update it via SVN; instead somebody will create an "instructions" text file in our deployment scripts (SQL scripts and the like, plus batch files to compile the ASPX files as individual DLLs for deployment) that says something like "Change X to Y in web.config files for Sites A, B and D", and relies on the individual developer following those instructions each time the file is updated.

This seems counter-intuitive to me: I would expect the web.config file to be kept in sync as needed, with necessary changes being made and the file committed as any other artifact of the codebase, but I have raised this issue in the past and nobody has paid it any mind.

What approach should be followed when dealing with config files like this?