diff --git a/src/pip/_internal/commands/show.py b/src/pip/_internal/commands/show.py
index c1aa0e07a4c..98abc9ba2d6 100644
--- a/src/pip/_internal/commands/show.py
+++ b/src/pip/_internal/commands/show.py
@@ -112,7 +112,7 @@ def _files_from_legacy(dist: BaseDistribution) -> Optional[Iterator[str]]:
         info = dist.metadata_directory
         if root is None or info is None:
             return paths
-        return (str(pathlib.Path(info, p).resolve().relative_to(root)) for p in paths)
+        return (str(pathlib.Path(info, p).relative_to(root)) for p in paths)
 
     for query_name in query_names:
         try:
diff --git a/src/pip/_internal/metadata/base.py b/src/pip/_internal/metadata/base.py
index 950678d4d55..9fdc123ced9 100644
--- a/src/pip/_internal/metadata/base.py
+++ b/src/pip/_internal/metadata/base.py
@@ -57,18 +57,26 @@ def location(self) -> Optional[str]:
         A string value is not necessarily a filesystem path, since distributions
         can be loaded from other sources, e.g. arbitrary zip archives. ``None``
         means the distribution is created in-memory.
+
+        Do not canonicalize this value with e.g. ``pathlib.Path.resolve()``. If
+        this is a symbolic link, we want to preserve the relative path between
+        it and files in the distribution.
         """
         raise NotImplementedError()
 
     @property
-    def metadata_directory(self) -> Optional[str]:
-        """Location of the metadata directory.
+    def info_directory(self) -> Optional[str]:
+        """Location of the .[egg|dist]-info directory.
 
         Similarly to ``location``, a string value is not necessarily a
         filesystem path. ``None`` means the distribution is created in-memory.
 
         For a modern .dist-info installation on disk, this should be something
         like ``{location}/{raw_name}-{version}.dist-info``.
+
+        Do not canonicalize this value with e.g. ``pathlib.Path.resolve()``. If
+        this is a symbolic link, we want to preserve the relative path between
+        it and other files in the distribution.
         """
         raise NotImplementedError()
 
diff --git a/src/pip/_internal/metadata/pkg_resources.py b/src/pip/_internal/metadata/pkg_resources.py
index 4847ae37e8d..59460062e47 100644
--- a/src/pip/_internal/metadata/pkg_resources.py
+++ b/src/pip/_internal/metadata/pkg_resources.py
@@ -49,7 +49,7 @@ def location(self) -> Optional[str]:
         return self._dist.location
 
     @property
-    def metadata_directory(self) -> Optional[str]:
+    def info_directory(self) -> Optional[str]:
         return self._dist.egg_info
 
     @property