[Samtools-help] Picard: how can I automate getting the version string from a Picard tool?

[Ross <ros...@gm...>]

Dear Picard developers,
Firstly, thank you for your excellent work. I'm bothering you because
I can't figure out how to make Picard tools disclose their version and
would appreciate any advice you can offer. Recording and verifying
tool executable provenance seems to me to be a very basic requirement
for reproducible NGS analyses. Specifically, we now expose many Picard
tools in Galaxy where they are greatly appreciated, and we're
currently working on ensuring that the reported version number of
every third party executable is integrated into the whole tool
framework as part of an ongoing push to ensure that third party tool
versions are recorded for posterity as part of every job's history
item. Could some kind soul let me know the command line trick to coax
a version string out of any Picard tool please ? If it's not currently
possible, may I ask the development team to consider adding a command
line parameter like --version or -v to EVERY Picard tool please?

I've tried everything I can think of --version, -v, -V and -Version
give the usual help text - but no version.

Thanks in advance...