The SciCat frontend is the SciCat metadata catalogue web UI, built on top of the Angular framework.
The frontend configuration is set by the config files. Files inside the config folder, with a .json extension are merged respecting the alphabetical order of the files in the container, with config.v3.json applied depending on the BE_VERSION.
SciCat Live and is not supported natively by the frontend.
For an extensive list of available options see here in the SciCat frontend section.
In the default configuration config, the frontend is set to call the backend service available at backend.localhost (either v4, by default, or v3 if specified otherwise by setting BE_VERSION).
For an explanation of how setting BE_VERSION changes the environment creation see here.
Since there was a small breaking change from v3 to v4, when connecting to the backend, the BE_VERSION value controls if config.v3.json file, which is applied when BE_VERSION=v3, should be included in the configs merge process.
With DEV=true, please use npm start -- --host 0.0.0.0. This is to allow traffic from any IP to the frontend component and it is necessary since the component runs in the docker network.
Setting the BACKEND_HTTPS_URL env variable requires changing the backend URL used by the frontend. This is managed here.
FRONTENT_HTTPS_URL it is likely you also want to set the BACKEND_HTTPS_URL, to allow the communication between the two wherever the browser is accessed.