Lighttpd

This is a straightforward case: I want ~/static/* to be available as http://example.com/static/*. I can't seem to find a way to do this cleanly.

The dumb way would be to move ~/static to ~/dummy/static, and use:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/static/" {
    server.document-root = "/home/user/dummy" 
}

That's no good; I don't want to move my entire static file directory down a level. This is too simple a configuration for me to need to navigate down an extra placeholder directory level every time I access it. (I could stick a symlink somewhere--and that's probably what I'll end up doing if I don't find a real solution--but this seems so basic that it's got to be possible.)

This works, but is bad:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/static/" {
    server.document-root = "/home/user" 
}

Of course, that's a huge security hole, since it'll allow symlinks out of ~/static.

This was the first thing I tried, but it doesn't work:

$HTTP["url"] =~ "^/static/" {
    server.document-root = "/home/user/static" 
    url.rewrite-once = ( "^/static(/.*)" => "$1" )
}

I think rewriting happens before conditions are matched or something, but I'm not sure.

This seems like an incredibly simple case; I must be missing something obvious.