I have a local component library that I use in most designs. I've been adding this to the library list in Eschema for each new design because I can't figure out how to add this permanently via preferences or something. Is creating a template the right/only way to make this permanent, or is there a better solution. Thanks.
The libraries are populated by the default template, so you would need to adjust that to have additional libraries added by default.
Personally, I find Chris Pavlina's solution to be the cleanest: https://raw.githubusercontent.com/cpavlina/kicad-schlib/master/create_project.sh
This creates a new directory with a shallow copy of footprints and libraries and maps the config files appropriately. I use a fork of this to maintain my own libraries and push back to GitHub any changes, so my next project inherits the updates.
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\$\begingroup\$ editing the kicad.pro file turned out to be very easy, once I knew that's where to set the preferences. It appears that one could set up a project with the libraries and preferences one wants, save the project, then copy and rename the .pro file as the default kicad.pro file. The file location on windows is C:\Program Files\KiCad\share\kicad\template \$\endgroup\$ – Llaves Dec 16 '16 at 22:10