the diff versions of grails are incompatible when it comes to the format of the ~/.grails/settings.groovy; grails 2.2 wants the travis_grails_settings_old.groovy file format, HOWEVER that format is incompatible with grails 2.3.5 (2.3?) and grails 2.3 requires the travis_grails_settings_new.groovy format , HOWEVER (to confuse the situation further) grails 2.4.3 (for example taxon-overflow projects) seems to have no problem with the old (used/required by grails 2.2)