According to their documentation for version 3.x , this is how you can do this. Shells, Tasks & Console Tools
In which they have mentioned to go to directory first using command line tool and then by typing bin/cake
Something like this
cd /path/to/app
bin/cake
And in response you will be able to see not only CakePHP's current version but also PHP's current version and few more information.
Welcome to CakePHP v3.0.0 Console
---------------------------------------------------------------
App : App
Path: /Users/markstory/Sites/cakephp-app/src/
---------------------------------------------------------------
Current Paths:
-app: src
-root: /Users/markstory/Sites/cakephp-app
-core: /Users/markstory/Sites/cakephp-app/vendor/cakephp/cakephp
Changing Paths:
Your working path should be the same as your application path. To change your path use the '-app' param.
Example: -app relative/path/to/myapp or -app /absolute/path/to/myapp
Available Shells:
[Bake] bake
[Migrations] migrations
[CORE] i18n, orm_cache, plugin, routes, server
[app] behavior_time, console, orm
To run an app or core command, type cake shell_name [args]
To run a plugin command, type cake Plugin.shell_name [args]
To get help on a specific command, type cake shell_name --help
Also I am not so sure this will work for older version than CakePHP 3.x as I have tried this in version 3.x only.. so please take a note on that too.