(Self-)citation etiquette This is particularly pertinent to the CS culture, where competitive conferences are often the main publication unit, which are then (sometimes) followed by journal versions.

Suppose that a paper was published at a conference as version A, and say, 5 years later, in a journal as version B (with the same title and authors). Assume also that during those 5 years, additional relevant papers on the topic were published.

When doing literature review in the introduction of future papers, the author of A and B is faced with a dilemma. To accurately reflect the historical development, he wants to cite version A and then the papers that followed it. However, the paper he actually wants people to read and cite is version B -- since it's cleaner, expanded, improved, etc. He can cite both versions, but then it looks like he's trying to rack up citations.

Does the CS community have a set etiquette for dealing with this situation? Is there perhaps a bibtex format where a single bib-entry covers both versions? Something that conveys the point "published first in year Y at venue V [so precedence is established] and then expanded version appeared in year Y' at venue V' [so just go read that one]"?
Usually I just cite the journal version. But (if the history is important) I would add a note to the same citation about earlier conferences or preprints.

I think this style is preferable to making one paper look like two citations, except possibly in cases where the conference and journal papers have other significant differences than completeness (such as changes to the author list or claimed results). It is also unrelated to whether the citation is to my own paper or someone else's.

For harvard-style Name (year) citations, it might also make sense to mention the earlier version in-text as Name (year, announced earlier-year), as well as putting the information in the actual reference.

[Converted from a comment to an answer at the suggestion of Kaveh]