diff --git a/libs/pbd/pathexpand.cc b/libs/pbd/pathexpand.cc
index f9c42b4948..ee9fc2d351 100644
--- a/libs/pbd/pathexpand.cc
+++ b/libs/pbd/pathexpand.cc
@@ -28,6 +28,8 @@
 #include <glibmm/fileutils.h>
 #include <glibmm/miscutils.h>
 
+#include "pbd/compose.h"
+#include "pbd/debug.h"
 #include "pbd/pathexpand.h"
 #include "pbd/strsplit.h"
 #include "pbd/tokenizer.h"
@@ -89,10 +91,15 @@ PBD::canonical_path (const std::string& path)
 {
 	char buf[PATH_MAX+1];
 
-	if (!realpath (path.c_str(), buf)) {
+	if (realpath (path.c_str(), buf) == NULL) {
+		DEBUG_TRACE (DEBUG::FileUtils,
+				string_compose("PBD::canonical_path: Unable to resolve %1: %2\n", path, g_strerror(errno)));
 		return path;
 	}
 
+	DEBUG_TRACE (DEBUG::FileUtils,
+			string_compose("PBD::canonical_path %1 resolved to: %2\n", path, string(buf)));
+
 	return string (buf);
 }