I install emacs using nix, a package manager available for Linux and OSX. It allows to install emacs and all desired packages and keep it up-to-date.
Packages are taken from the nixpkgs collection, which creates them from melpa and other sources.
Emacs and its packages are defined in my nix config. More information about how to install emacs this way is in the manual.
A list of packages can be generated with list-emacs-pkgs.sh
(requires nix to be installed):
./list-emacs-pkgs.sh counsel | jq
Then use-package is used to configure emacs.