Using own MANIFEST.MF file or adding dependencies with grails-maven-plugin

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I am trying to convert a grails project from ant build to maven build and I am unable to add any dependencies to MANIFEST.MF file. Is there a way I can add dependencies to the MANIFEST.MF or use my own MANIFEST.MF file with grails-maven-plugin? I have tried to use the maven-resources-plugin for copying the file, but its not working. Any pointers on this would really help :)

Plugins in my pom.xml look like:

<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-compiler-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>3.1</version>
    <configuration>
        <compilerId>groovy-eclipse-compiler</compilerId>
        <source>${jdk.version}</source>
        <target>${jdk.version}</target>
    </configuration>
    <dependencies>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
            <artifactId>groovy-eclipse-compiler</artifactId>
            <version>2.9.1-01</version>
        </dependency>
        <dependency>
            <groupId>org.codehaus.groovy</groupId>
            <artifactId>groovy-eclipse-batch</artifactId>
            <version>2.3.7-01</version>
        </dependency>
    </dependencies>
</plugin>
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.grails</groupId>
    <artifactId>grails-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.4</version>
    <configuration>
        <skipTests>true</skipTests>
        <fork>true</fork>
    </configuration>
    <extensions>true</extensions>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <goals>
                <goal>clean</goal>
                <goal>maven-war</goal>
                <goal>validate</goal>
            </goals>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.codehaus.mojo</groupId>
    <artifactId>cobertura-maven-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.7</version>
    <configuration>
        <formats>
            <format>html</format>
            <format>xml</format>
        </formats>
    </configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
    <artifactId>maven-war-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.6</version>
    <configuration>
        <warSourceDirectory>web-app</warSourceDirectory>
        <failOnMissingWebXml>false</failOnMissingWebXml>
    </configuration>
</plugin>
<plugin>
    <groupId>org.apache.maven.plugins</groupId>
    <artifactId>maven-resources-plugin</artifactId>
    <version>2.4.2</version>
    <executions>
        <execution>
            <id>default-copy-resources</id>
            <phase>process-resources</phase>
            <goals>
                <goal>copy-resources</goal>
            </goals>
            <configuration>
                <overwrite>true</overwrite>
                <outputDirectory>${project.build.directory}/${project.artifactId}-${project.version}/META-INF/</outputDirectory>
                <resources>
                    <resource>
                        <directory>${project.basedir}/src/META-INF</directory>
                    </resource>
                </resources>
            </configuration>
        </execution>
    </executions>
</plugin>

MANIFEST.MF generated by maven looks like

Manifest-Version: 1.0
Ant-Version: Apache Ant 1.8.4
Created-By: 1.8.0_144-b01 (Oracle Corporation)
Import-Package: javax.servlet;version="[3.0,4.0)",javax.servlet.http;v
 ersion="[3.0,4.0)",javax.servlet.resources;version="[3.0,4.0)",javax.
 servlet.jsp;version="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.js
 p.el;version="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.jstl;
 version="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.core;
 version="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.fmt;v
 ersion="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.sql;ve
 rsion="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.jstl.tlv;ver
 sion="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.tagext;versio
 n="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.servlet.jsp.resources;versio
 n="[2.2,3.0)";resolution:=optional,javax.xml.parsers,org.w3c.dom,org.
 xml.sax,org.xml.sax.ext,org.xml.sax.helpers
Webapp-Context: empdet
Bundle-ClassPath: .,WEB-INF/classes,WEB-INF/lib/activation-1.1.jar,WEB
 -INF/lib/antlr-2.7.7.jar,WEB-INF/lib/aopalliance-1.0.jar,WEB-INF/lib/
 aspectjrt-1.8.2.jar,WEB-INF/lib/aspectjweaver-1.8.2.jar,WEB-INF/lib/c
 lassmate-1.0.0.jar,WEB-INF/lib/common-0.0.12.jar,WEB-INF/lib/commons-
 beanutils-1.9.1.jar,WEB-INF/lib/commons-codec-1.6.jar,WEB-INF/lib/com
 mons-collections-3.2.1.jar,WEB-INF/lib/commons-fileupload-1.3.1.jar,W
 EB-INF/lib/commons-httpclient-3.0.jar,WEB-INF/lib/commons-io-2.2.jar,
 WEB-INF/lib/commons-lang-2.6.jar,WEB-INF/lib/commons-lang3-3.2.1.jar,
 WEB-INF/lib/commons-validator-1.4.0.jar,WEB-INF/lib/concurrentlinkedh
 ashmap-lru-1.4.jar

Name: Grails Application
Implementation-Title: empdet
Implementation-Version: 0.0.1-SNAPSHOT
Grails-Version: 2.4.4

Along with this content in MANIFEST.MF, I also need to have the dependencies section as below

Dependencies: common,deployment.ValidationService.jar