The SOURCE_DATE_EPOCH mechanism for reproducible builds require some date(1)
with -d switch to print the relevant date and time strings of another point of
time.
In other words it requires some date(1) that behaves like the GNU date(1) [1].
The BSD date(1) [2] on the other hand has the same switch but with a different
meaning.
Respect this and check the date(1) abilities before usage, error on non
working version. Use the well known pre- and suffixes for the GNU variant of
a tool on *BSD hosts to search for a working date(1) version.