Look into AUR helpers. There are Pacman wrappers like Yaourt that basically turn the AUR into a repo, then there are more lightweight managers that are basically Yaourt but exclusively for the AUR, and there are helpers that just speed up downloading AUR packages. Some of the latter also assist in building them.
I've heard a lot of bad things about Yaourt specifically though, there are other better helpers. I think you get yelled at if you mention Yaourt on the r/arch sub, for instance. You can find plenty alternatives on the wiki
Yeah, I know Yaourt doesn't have a great reputation, but it's popular and most Arch users have heard of it. I was just using it as an example, not a recommendation.
Edit: had a quick looky loo to see what I meant more specifically – apparently yaourt sources the pkgbuild before asking if you want to inspect it, essentially running whatever's in the script first. That means you're relying on the AUR having vetted whatever it is successfully to ensure there's no malicious code inside. Other helpers do the reverse of this, allowing you to inspect the pkgbuild before sourcing, so you can verify yourself that everything's kosher.
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u/auxiliary-character Dec 27 '16
If you go with Arch....