For users that have metered or slow internet connections it is annoying
to have Terraform constantly re-downloading the same files when they
initialize many separate directories.
To help such users, here we add an opt-in mechanism to use a local
directory as a read-through cache. When enabled, any plugin download will
be skipped if a suitable file already exists in the cache directory. If
the desired plugin isn't in the cache, it will be downloaded into the
cache for use next time.
This mechanism also serves to reduce total disk usage by allowing
plugin files to be shared between many configurations, as long as the
target system isn't Windows and supports either hardlinks or symlinks.
Radek Simko