Head meta tags are omitted depending on attribute order

[Wakeful-Cloud]

Describe the bug

mergeHead rigidly assumes that the first attribute in each head item is the name/key. Not only is this is not documented, but if a user wanted to have multiple meta tags with different names but the same content (e.g., og:image and og:image:url), they must take care to put the name attribute before the content attribute, otherwise VitePress will only output the final meta tag.

Reproduction

Reproduction example. Add the below to the VitePress config file:

  // ...
  head: [
    // Only the second meta tag will show up in the final HTML:
    // <meta content="contentA" name="name2">
    [
      "meta",
      {
        // Order of attributes matters here!!!
        content: "contentA",
        name: "name1",
      }
    ],
    [
      "meta",
      {
        // Order of attributes matters here!!!
        content: "contentA",
        name: "name2",
      }
    ],

    // Both of these meta tags will show up in the final HTML:
    // <meta name="name3" content="contentB">
    // <meta name="name4" content="contentB">
    [
      "meta",
      {
        // Order of attributes matters here!!!
        name: "name3",
        content: "contentB",
      }
    ],
    [
      "meta",
      {
        // Order of attributes matters here!!!
        name: "name4",
        content: "contentB",
      }
    ]
  ],
  // ...

Note how the attribute order changes (i.e., content before name for the first two tags, then name before content for the latter two tags).

Expected behavior

I expect VitePress to not silently omit meta tags. Moreover, I expect to be able to repeat meta tags (e.g., author, regardless of the order of the attributes within each head item object.

System Info

System:
    OS: Linux 7.0 Ubuntu 26.04 LTS 26.04 LTS (Resolute Raccoon)
    CPU: (16) x64 AMD
    Memory: 5.76 GB / 17.88 GB
    Container: Yes
    Shell: 5.3.9 - /bin/bash
  Binaries:
    Node: 24.16.0 - /run/user/1000/fnm_multishells/147846_1786511297976/bin/node
    npm: 11.13.0 - /run/user/1000/fnm_multishells/147846_1786511297976/bin/npm
  npmPackages:
    vitepress: ^2.0.0-alpha.19 => 2.0.0-alpha.19

Additional context

No response

Validations

• Check if you're on the latest VitePress version.
• Follow our Code of Conduct
• Read the docs.
• Check that there isn't already an issue that reports the same bug to avoid creating a duplicate.

[brc-dd]

You can add something like id as the first prop if you want multiple elements with the same name/prop. We need some way to dedupe when the page changes, it's not easy to determine if two entries are same or overrides without a key prop.

[Wakeful-Cloud]

That is true - I originally ran into this after my linter reorganized the attributes in alphabetical order (i.e., content before name). What if mergeHead first searched for a name attribute and, only if that fails, falls back to using the first attribute?

[Edit]
Never mind - I read your comment in the linked PR.

[brc-dd]

We can add special handling for id. Like if you add it, we can respect it regardless of the order. Special handling for name won't work like that because that's not expected to be unique per page.