Nine times out of ten I'd say you could probably just install from the AUR. If not I doubt you could do so programatically, because the names might not be the same.
Not only are the names not the same, but the way the packages are split differs. For instance, Debian/Ubuntu will give the end-user "somepackage", but the developer needs to also install "somepackage-dev". In Arch, the -dev stuff is included in the end-user package.
Comments
Nine times out of ten I'd say you could probably just install from the AUR. If not I doubt you could do so programatically, because the names might not be the same.
Not only are the names not the same, but the way the packages are split differs. For instance, Debian/Ubuntu will give the end-user "somepackage", but the developer needs to also install "somepackage-dev". In Arch, the -dev stuff is included in the end-user package.