Upgrading Grails to 1.3.7, need troubleshooting assistance - grails

Question

I'm trying to upgrade a Grails application from 1.0.3 to 1.3.7.
I've created a Grails 1.3.7 project, and have done my best to copy over the old classes and other files the new project. Of course, something has gone wrong:
$ grails run-app
<--snip-->
Running Grails application..
2011-10-20 13:37:47,195 [main] ERROR context.GrailsContextLoader - Error executing bootstraps:
Error creating bean with name 'grailsApplication' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]:
Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.reflect.MalformedParameterizedTypeException
org.springframework.beans.factory.BeanCreationException:
Error creating bean with name 'grailsApplication' defined in ServletContext resource [/WEB-INF/applicationContext.xml]:
Initialization of bean failed; nested exception is java.lang.reflect.MalformedParameterizedTypeException
at java.security.AccessController.doPrivileged(Native Method)
at org.grails.tomcat.TomcatServer.start(TomcatServer.groovy:212)
at grails.web.container.EmbeddableServer$start.call(Unknown Source)
at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5_closure12.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:158)
at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5_closure12.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy)
at _GrailsSettings_groovy$_run_closure10.doCall(_GrailsSettings_groovy:280)
at _GrailsSettings_groovy$_run_closure10.call(_GrailsSettings_groovy)
at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:149)
at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure5.call(_GrailsRun_groovy)
at _GrailsRun_groovy.runInline(_GrailsRun_groovy:116)
at _GrailsRun_groovy.this$4$runInline(_GrailsRun_groovy)
at _GrailsRun_groovy$_run_closure1.doCall(_GrailsRun_groovy:59)
at RunApp$_run_closure1.doCall(RunApp.groovy:33)
at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure5.doCall(Gant.groovy:381)
at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure7.doCall(Gant.groovy:415)
at gant.Gant$_dispatch_closure7.doCall(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant.withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy:427)
at gant.Gant.this$2$withBuildListeners(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant$this$2$withBuildListeners.callCurrent(Unknown Source)
at gant.Gant.dispatch(Gant.groovy:415)
at gant.Gant.this$2$dispatch(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant.invokeMethod(Gant.groovy)
at gant.Gant.executeTargets(Gant.groovy:590)
at gant.Gant.executeTargets(Gant.groovy:589)
Caused by: java.lang.reflect.MalformedParameterizedTypeException
at java.lang.Class.getGenericInterfaces(Class.java:788)
... 24 more
If you look through this stack trace, you will find no references to the code of my application, which is making it hard for me to track down.
I need some suggestions of what I could check that could this error. Here is my applicationContext.xml which seems unlikely to be the problem:
<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans-2.5.xsd">
<bean id="grailsApplication" class="org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.GrailsApplicationFactoryBean">
<description>Grails application factory bean</description>
<property name="grailsDescriptor" value="/WEB-INF/grails.xml" />
<property name="grailsResourceLoader" ref="grailsResourceLoader" />
</bean>
<bean id="pluginManager" class="org.codehaus.groovy.grails.plugins.GrailsPluginManagerFactoryBean">
<description>A bean that manages Grails plugins</description>
<property name="grailsDescriptor" value="/WEB-INF/grails.xml" />
<property name="application" ref="grailsApplication" />
</bean>
<bean id="grailsConfigurator" class="org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsRuntimeConfigurator">
<constructor-arg>
<ref bean="grailsApplication" />
</constructor-arg>
<property name="pluginManager" ref="pluginManager" />
</bean>
<bean id="grailsResourceLoader" class="org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.GrailsResourceLoaderFactoryBean">
<property name="grailsResourceHolder" ref="grailsResourceHolder" />
</bean>
<bean id="grailsResourceHolder" scope="prototype" class="org.codehaus.groovy.grails.commons.spring.GrailsResourceHolder">
<property name="resources">
<value>classpath*:**/grails-app/**/*.groovy</value>
</property>
</bean>
<bean id="characterEncodingFilter"
class="org.springframework.web.filter.CharacterEncodingFilter">
<property name="encoding">
<value>utf-8</value>
</property>
</bean>
</beans>
Help is greatly appreciated, and just let me know if more information is needed.

Answer 1

From the notes I took when I upgraded a project from Grails 1.0.3 to 1.3.7 (not all these steps may be necessary):
Make sure your project source are in packages (i.e., "com.companyname.projectname", not in the default package)
Make sure plugin source are also in packages (i.e., "org.grails.pluginname", not in the default package)
Remove hibernate.jar from the project\lib directory (hibernate is now a plugin)
With GRAILS_HOME set to the new version, create a dummy project and copy the fresh BuildConfig.groovy into the project to be upgraded
Run "grails upgrade" and answer "y" to the prompts

Answer 2

Take a look in stacktrace.log, it will possibly give you a better understanding of the actual problem.
Also try "grails clean" and "grails compile" before "grails run-app" to see if it's a problem with old garbage.