That’s how you specify branches in puppetlabs’ spec_helper fixtures.yml:
fixtures:
forge_modules:
stdlib:
repo: "puppetlabs/stdlib"
ref: "4.6.0"
symlinks:
mapr_helpers: "#{source_dir}"
repositories:
mapr:
repo: "http://myurl/puppet-mapr.git"
# this is a branch. stolen from: don't remember.
ref: 'remotes/origin/ab/devel'