How do you get the maven binary version from within a custom Mojo?

I'm referring to the maven binary version that is returned when you usually run

mvn --version

from the command line which returns an output like the below,

Apache Maven 3.0.4
Maven home: /usr/share/maven
Java version: 1.6.0_45, vendor: Sun Microsystems Inc.
Java home: /home/uvindra/Apps/java6/jdk1.6.0_45/jre
Default locale: en_US, platform encoding: UTF-8
OS name: "linux", version: "3.11.0-15-generic", arch: "amd64", family: "unix"

Note the maven version 3.0.4. What's best way of accessing this from within a custom Maven Mojo in Java? Is there a property available for this?

I want to run a validation against current maven version that is executing my Mojo, Thanks

Solution

Using getApplicationVersion() as mentioned by khmarbaise has been deprecated, getMavenVersion() is the recommended function to be used. You need to include maven-core 3.0.2 or higher as a dependency to use the RuntimeInformation class.

here is the complete usage example,

Required pom dependency

<dependency>
   <groupId>org.apache.maven</groupId>
   <artifactId>maven-core</artifactId>
   <version>3.0.2</version>
</dependency>

Package import

import org.apache.maven.rtinfo.RuntimeInformation;

Usage

 /**
 *
 * @component
 */
private RuntimeInformation runtime;

public void execute() {
     String version = runtime.getMavenVersion();
     getLog().info("Maven Version: " + version);
     ...
}

@khmarbaise, Thanks for pointing me in the right direction