When working with Saltstack, it happens that when adding new branches via the salt-master configuration, the branches do not immediately get picked up. IMHO it is an unpractical flaw, but the people remaining to develop Saltstack may have other opinions or deeper knowledge about the constraints the git backends gitpython and pygit2 may impose.
I figured two easy options to get the new branches to work immediately:
Variant 1: Change config, flush the gitfs caches and restart
systemctl stop salt-master && rm -rf /var/cache/salt/master/gitfs/* && rm -rf /var/cache/salt/master/file_lists/* && systemctl start salt-master
Variant 2: Change config, restart, commit & push to the new branch, salt-run filesystem.update (or wait for the git update interval)
systemctl restart salt-master
# Alibi edit something
# git commit -m "Test"
# git push
salt-run fileserver.update # Or wait for the git update interval
If you run any salt-syndic, apply the same measures there, too.