Speeding up cakephp with nginx and no mod_rewrite issues

I am trying to speedup rather crappy php, website build on top of cakephp and decided to follow this tutorial, I was seriously annoyed that I can't get rig of /app/webroot prefix in css/js links. I didn't want to hack them directly because I am using automatic css/js compression.

It wasn't until I found this solution from the ticket closed in January I managed to fix it.

Quite surprised that in order to dispatch cakephp app I need to patch the core and there are hundred of unanswered questions/issues about deployment of cakephp without mod_rewrite.

PS. Good start - this is my first day of holiday gone.