I now use https://github.com/junegunn/vim-plug - you can setup a one-liner in your Vimrc to download and set it up, then :PlugInstall and you're done (similar to what they have in the readme but I linked to a specific hash on GitHub instead of master).

I also keep a separate file that lists the plugins to install and the source that from my main .vimrc. A lot of my coworkers have wanted my main vimrc for an "out of the box setup" of Vim and found it best for them to specify their own plugins rather than just blindly use mine - it also makes it easier for them to grab the latest copy without any conflicts.

Can you explain further what you want to do? But for me, I keep a github repo with my vimrc (among other configs) and I have a Makefile there that symlinks the repo files to ~/