Hey so i had this issue before in 4.1.0 (thread got locked), i have a spring conflict in my grails app,
problem is i dont know which dependency is pulling in the old version of spring, and i dont know how to go about it, i tried excluding from lots of places but doesn't help.

grails.servlet.version = "2.5" // Change depending on target container     compliance (2.5 or 3.0)
grails.project.class.dir = "target/classes"
grails.project.test.class.dir = "target/test-classes"
grails.project.test.reports.dir = "target/test-reports"
grails.project.target.level = 1.6
grails.project.source.level = 1.6
//grails.project.war.file = "target/${appName}-${appVersion}.war"

// uncomment (and adjust settings) to fork the JVM to isolate classpaths
//grails.project.fork = [
//	run: [maxMemory:1024, minMemory:64, debug:false, maxPerm:256]
//]

grails.project.dependency.resolution = {
// inherit Grails' default dependencies
inherits("global") {
	// specify dependency exclusions here; for example, uncomment this to disable ehcache:
	excludes 'xml-apis'


}
log "warn" // log level of Ivy resolver, either 'error', 'warn', 'info', 'debug' or 'verbose'
checksums true // Whether to verify checksums on resolve
legacyResolve false // whether to do a secondary resolve on plugin installation, not advised and here for backwards compatibility

dependencies {
    // specify dependencies here under either 'build', 'compile', 'runtime', 'test' or 'provided' scopes e.g.
    compile('io.appium:java-client:4.1.1',
            'joda-time:joda-time:2.9.3'
    )
}
repositories {
	inherits true // Whether to inherit repository definitions from plugins
	//mavenRepo "http://repo.grails.org/grails/plugins/"
	grailsRepo 'http://svn.company.com/grailsPlugins'
	
	grailsPlugins()
	grailsHome()
	grailsCentral()

	mavenLocal()
	mavenCentral()
	mavenRepo 'http://repo.grails.org/grails/repo/'


//		mavenRepo "http://oss.sonatype.org/content/groups/public/"
	mavenRepo     "http://repo1.maven.org/maven2/org/seleniumhq/selenium/"
 		mavenRepo "http://oss.sonatype.org/content/groups/public/"
	    	// uncomment these (or add new ones) to enable remote dependency resolution from public Maven repositories
//		mavenRepo "http://snapshots.repository.codehaus.org"
//		mavenRepo "http://repository.codehaus.org"
//		mavenRepo "http://download.java.net/maven/2/"
//		mavenRepo "http://repository.jboss.com/maven2/"

}



plugins {
	build (":tomcat:2.2.2")
	compile (':general-utilities:0.49')
	compile('com.company:xmlhttp:1.0.14'){
		changing = true
	}
	compile ('com.company:1.1.7')
	compile ('com.company:sucore:1.1.6')
	compile (':wslite:0.7.2.0',
		':mail:1.0-SNAPSHOT-fork',
		':executor:0.3',					// run asynchronous/concurrent/background threads
		':cache:1.0.1',
		':angularjs-resources:1.2.14',
		':calendar:1.2.1',					// More themes available at http://grails.org/plugin/calendar
		':jquery-ui:1.10.3',
		':mail:1.0.4'
	)

	runtime (":hibernate:2.2.2",
	 ":jquery:1.9.1",
	 ":resources:1.1.6",
	 ":database-migration:1.2.1",
	 ":angularjs-resources:1.2.14")

	// Uncomment these (or add new ones) to enable additional resources capabilities
 //		runtime ":zipped-resources:1.0"
 //		runtime ":cached-resources:1.0"
//		runtime ":yui-minify-resources:0.1.4"
    }
}

can someone help me how to word the excludes and maybe where to put them. i just cant seem to figure it out.

Thanks,

UPDATE:
So I determinded that the spring core im using is tightly binded with grails 2.2.2 which is what im using and sadly dont have a work around ready