website: Document the plugin cache

Since we don't currently auto-install provisioner plugins this is
currently placed on the providers documentation page and referred to as
the "Provider Plugin Cache". In future this mechanism may also apply to
provisioners, in which case we'll figure out at that point where better
to place this information so it can be referenced from both the provider
and provisioner documentation pages.

website/docs/configuration/providers.html.md

@@ -207,3 +207,64 @@ and Terraform uses the name to understand the name and version of a particular
 provider binary. Third-party plugins will often be distributed with an
 appropriate filename already set in the distribution archive so that it can
 be extracted directly into the plugin directory described above.
+
+## Provider Plugin Cache
+
+By default, `terraform init` downloads plugins into a subdirectory of the
+working directory so that each working directory is self-contained. As a
+consequence, if you have multiple configurations that use the same provider
+then a separate copy of its plugin will be downloaded for each configuration.
+
+Given that provider plugins can be quite large (on the order of hundreds of
+megabytes), this default behavior can be inconvenient for those with slow
+or metered Internet connections. Therefore Terraform optionally allows the
+use of a local directory as a shared plugin cache, which then allows each
+distinct plugin binary to be downloaded only once.
+
+To enable the plugin cache, use the `plugin_cache_dir` setting in
+[the CLI configuration file](https://www.terraform.io/docs/commands/cli-config.html).
+For example:
+
+```hcl
+# (Note that the CLI configuration file is _not_ the same as the .tf files
+#  used to configure infrastructure.)
+
+plugin_cache_dir = "$HOME/.terraform.d/plugin-cache"
+```
+
+Please note that on Windows it is necessary to use forward slash separators
+(`/`) rather than the conventional backslash (`\`) since the configuration
+file parser considers a backslash to begin an escape sequence.
+
+Setting this in the configuration file is the recommended approach for a
+persistent setting. Alternatively, the `TF_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIR` environment
+variable can be used to enable caching or to override an existing cache
+directory within a particular shell session:
+
+```bash
+export TF_PLUGIN_CACHE_DIR="~/.terraform.d/plugin-cache"
+```
+
+When a plugin cache directory is enabled, the `terraform init` command will
+still access the plugin distribution server to obtain metadata about which
+plugins are available, but once a suitable version has been selected it will
+first check to see if the selected plugin is already available in the cache
+directory. If so, the already-downloaded plugin binary will be used.
+
+If the selected plugin is not already in the cache, it will be downloaded
+into the cache first and then copied from there into the correct location
+under your current working directory.
+
+When possible, Terraform will use hardlinks or symlinks to avoid storing
+a separate copy of a cached plugin in multiple directories. At present, this
+is not supported on Windows and instead a copy is always created.
+
+The plugin cache directory must *not* be the third-party plugin directory
+or any other directory Terraform searches for pre-installed plugins, since
+the cache management logic conflicts with the normal plugin discovery logic
+when operating on the same directory.
+
+Please note that Terraform will never itself delete a plugin from the
+plugin cache once it's been placed there. Over time, as plugins are upgraded,
+the cache directory may grow to contain several unused versions which must be
+manually deleted.