a typedef will not save you from this :) replacing the usage of byte with uint8_t is much, much better.

union i2c_smbus_data {
	__u8 byte;
	__u16 word;
	__u8 block[I2C_SMBUS_BLOCK_MAX + 2]; /* block[0] is used for length */
			       /* and one more for user-space compatibility */
};