Nginx — static file serving confusion with root & alias

Question

I need to serve my app through my app server at 8080, and my static files from a directory without touching the app server. The nginx config I have is something

Answer 1

as say as @treecoder

In case of the root directive, full path is appended to the root including the location part, whereas in case of the alias directive, only the portion of the path NOT including the location part is appended to the alias.

A picture is worth a thousand words

for root:

for alias: