diff --git a/gio/gdbus-2.0/codegen/gdbus-codegen.in b/gio/gdbus-2.0/codegen/gdbus-codegen.in
index e3f4f00f8..67d367543 100755
--- a/gio/gdbus-2.0/codegen/gdbus-codegen.in
+++ b/gio/gdbus-2.0/codegen/gdbus-codegen.in
@@ -37,6 +37,9 @@ else:
     # parent directory to the python path.
     path = os.path.join(filedir, '..')
 
+# Canonicalize, then do further testing
+path = os.path.abspath(path)
+
 # If the above path detection failed, use the hard-coded datadir. This can
 # happen when, for instance, bindir and datadir are not in the same prefix or
 # on Windows where we cannot make any guarantees about the directory structure.
@@ -46,7 +49,7 @@ else:
 if not os.path.isfile(os.path.join(path, 'codegen', 'codegen_main.py')):
     path = os.path.join('@DATADIR@', 'glib-2.0')
 
-sys.path.insert(0, os.path.abspath(path))
+sys.path.insert(0, path)
 from codegen import codegen_main
 
 sys.exit(codegen_main.codegen_main())