deployer 7 choose separate branch for staging

[jasperf]

What if I want to (temporarily) choose a different branch for deployment to staging? How would I add that to the deploy.yml file? I mean would this be the way:

config:
  application: 'our-app'
  remote_user: forge
  deploy_path: '~/{{hostname}}'
  repository: '[email protected]:domain/our-app.git'
  php_fpm_version: '8.0'
  keep_releases: '10'

.....

hosts:
  prod:
    hostname: 'domain.com'
  staging:
    hostname: 'staging.domain.com'
    branch: 'php8'

or is there a more appropriate way?

Did use it in new

import:
  - recipe/laravel.php
  - contrib/php-fpm.php
  - contrib/npm.php

config:
  application: 'domain-app'
  remote_user: forge
  deploy_path: '~/{{hostname}}'
  repository: '[email protected]:domain/domain-app.git'
  php_fpm_version: '8.0'
  keep_releases: '10'
  shared_files: 
    - '.env'
    - '.transip_private_key'
    - 'storage/app/exact.api.json'
  shared_dirs:
    - 'public/uploads'
    - 'public/published'
    - 'storage/framework/cache'
    - 'storage/framework/sessions'
    - 'storage/framework/views'
    - 'storage/logs'
    - 'storage/tls'
    - 'storage/app/public'
    - 'storage/app/modules'
  writable_dirs:
    - 'public/uploads'
    - 'public/published'
    - 'storage/framework/cache/data'
    - 'storage/logs'
    - 'storage/tls'
    - 'storage/app/public'
    - 'storage/app/modules'

hosts:
  prod:
    hostname: 'domain.com'
  staging:
    hostname: 'staging.domain.com'
    branch: 'php8'

tasks:
  deploy:
    - deploy:prepare
    - deploy:vendors
    - artisan:storage:link
    - artisan:view:cache
    - artisan:config:cache
    - artisan:optimize
    - artisan:migrate
    - artisan:queue:restart    
    - artisan:horizon:terminate
    - deploy:publish

after:
  deploy:failed: deploy:unlock

and did see

ep deploy staging
[staging] info deploying php8                                                                                                                                                                          
task deploy:setup
task deploy:lock
task deploy:release
task deploy:update_code
task deploy:check_env
task deploy:shared
task deploy:writable
task deploy:vendors
task deploy:regenerate_key
task artisan:storage:link
task artisan:view:cache
task artisan:config:cache
task artisan:optimize
task artisan:migrate
task artisan:queue:restart
task artisan:horizon:terminate
task deploy:symlink
task deploy:unlock
task deploy:cleanup
[staging] info successfully deployed!

with indication of usage of php8. Did seem to be really slow somehow though hanging on vendors. Did update composer packages including latest Laravel.. but still.

[jasperf]

Post deployment I did test and saw

dep ssh staging
forge@app-staging:~/staging.domain.com/current$ php artisan --version
Laravel Framework 8.67.0

so Laravel got updated to latest version as we updated things using composer update and deploy.yml was added so added a branch this way does seem to work. Also do not see a loss of assets as of yet.