parallel download

configuration/download_cache.rst

@@ -84,3 +84,10 @@ a lot of storage. If you are using this feature, provide for a sufficiently larg
 At the moment, it is only a folder. You can clean the cached artifacts just by removing that folder and its contents. You might also be able to 
 run scripts and jobs that remove old artifacts only. If you do such operations, please make sure that there are not other Conan processes using
 it simultaneously, or they might fail.
+
+
+.. note::
+
+  Installation of binaries can be accelerated setting up parallel downloads with the ``general.parallel_download``
+  **experimental** configuration in :ref:`conan_conf`. You might want to try combining both the parallel download and
+  the download cache for extra speed.

reference/commands/consumer/install.rst

@@ -264,3 +264,9 @@ they should match, otherwise, an error will be raised.
     $ conan install . version@user/testing # OK
     $ conan install . pkg/version@user/testing # OK
     $ conan install pkg/version@user/testing user/channel # Error, first arg is not a path
+
+
+.. note::
+
+  Installation of binaries can be accelerated setting up parallel downloads with the ``general.parallel_download``
+  **experimental** configuration in :ref:`conan_conf`.

reference/commands/creator/create.rst

@@ -152,3 +152,8 @@ The ``reference`` field can be:
 
 In case of installing a pre-built binary, steps from 5 to 11 will be skipped. Note that ``deploy()`` method is only used in
 :command:`conan install`.
+
+.. note::
+
+  Installation of binaries can be accelerated setting up parallel downloads with the ``general.parallel_download``
+  **experimental** configuration in :ref:`conan_conf`.

reference/config_files/conan.conf.rst

@@ -20,6 +20,7 @@ The typical location of the **conan.conf** file is the directory ``~/.conan/``:
     sysrequires_sudo = True               # environment CONAN_SYSREQUIRES_SUDO
     request_timeout = 60                  # environment CONAN_REQUEST_TIMEOUT (seconds)
     default_package_id_mode = semver_direct_mode # environment CONAN_DEFAULT_PACKAGE_ID_MODE
+    # parallel_download = 8               # experimental download binaries in parallel
     # full_transitive_package_id = 0      
     # retry = 2                           # environment CONAN_RETRY
     # retry_wait = 5                      # environment CONAN_RETRY_WAIT (seconds)
@@ -138,6 +139,13 @@ it will be ``semver_direct_mode``, but can change to any value defined in :ref:`
 The ``full_transitive_package_id`` changes the way package IDs are computed regarding transitive dependencies.
 By default, if not specified will be disabled (``0``). Read more about it in :ref:`full_transitive_package_id`.
 
+The ``parallel_download`` configuration defines the number of threads to be used to do parallel downloads of
+different binaries. This happens when dependencies are installed (``conan install``, ``conan create``) and when
+multiple binaries for the same package are retrieved via ``conan download`` command. This is an **experimental**
+feature, subject to change. It is known that the output is still not clean, and will be mangled when using multiple
+threads. Please report on https://github.com/conan-io/conan/issues about performance gains, and other issues.
+You might want to try this one in combination with the ``storage.download_cache`` configuration (see below.)
+
 
 The ``cmake_***`` variables will declare the corresponding CMake variable when you use the
 :ref:`cmake generator<cmake_generator>` and the :ref:`CMake build tool<cmake_reference>`.